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TAKING 

CHANCES 


CLARENCE L. CULLEN 



G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 


i 



L.itomry of Gon^roe* 

Copies Receded 

OCT 1 1900 

Copyright entry 

9 <a?- 

m^VWIST.^ 

SECOND COPY, 

Delivered to 

ORDER DIVISION, 

OCT 19 I9J0 


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Copyright, 1898-1899-1900, By 

THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. 


Copyright, 1900, By 
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY. 


Taking Chances. 




CONTENTS. 


Introductory Note 5 

This Wiretapper Was Color-blind 7 

“ Whooping ” a Race-horse Under the Wire 15 

Just Like Finding Money 24 

This Son of Fonso Was of No Account 33 

Hard-luck Wail of an Old-time Trainer 42 

Story of an “Almost” Combination 51 

“ Red ” Donnelly’s Streak of Luck 59 

And “ Red Beak Jim ” Took the Tip 69 

The Game of Running “Ringers” 77 

Experiences of a Verdant Bookmaker 87 

The Man Who Knew All About Touts 96 

A “Copper-lined Cinch” That Did Go Through 106 

He “ Coppered ” His Wife’s “ Hunches ” 113 

A Race Horse That Paid a Church Debt 120 

A Seedy Sport’s String of Horses 131 

This Telegram Was Signed Just “Bub” 139 

Story of a Famous Pat Hand 151 

Great Luck at an Inopportune Time 162 

Card-playing on Ocean Steamers 170 


iv 


CONTENTS. 


This Dog Knew the Game of Poker 179 

Wind-up of a Train Game of Poker 188 

Queer Pacific Coast Poker 196 

The Proper Time to Get “ Cold Feet ” 205 

Cato Was Just Bound to Play Poker 214 

Finish of an Educated Red Man 225 

The Uncertain Game of Stud Poker 233 

This Man Won Too Often. 242 

The Nerve of Gamblers at Critical Moments 251 

The Insidious Game of Squeeze-Spindle 259 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 


To the man who, at any period of his days, has been 
bitten by that ferocious and fever-producing insect col- 
loquially known as the “ horse bug,” and likewise to the 
man whose nervous system has been racked by the depre- 
dations of the “ poker microbe,” these tales of the turf 
and of the green cloth are sympathetically dedicated. The 
thoroughbred running horse is a peculiar animal. While 
he is often beaten, the very wisest veterans of the turf 
have a favorite maxim to the effect that “ You can't beat 
the ponies ” — meaning the thoroughbred racers ; which 
sounds paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a strange 
affair, in that all men who play it appear, from their own 
statements, to lose at it persistently and perennially. 
There is surely something weird and uncanny about a 
game among whose devotees there seem to be no win- 
ners — according to the winners' own statements, be it 
said once more. The genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, blown- 
in-the bottle pokerist rarely acknowledges that he is ahead 
of the game — not until the day after, at any rate. 

These stories, which were originally printed in the col- 
umns of the New York Sun, all belong to the eminent do- 
main of strict truthfulness. If they do not serve to show 
that the “ horse bug ” and the “ poker microbe ” are good 
things to stear clear of, they will by no means have failed 
of their purpose; for the writer had nothing didactic in 
mind in setting them down as he heard them. 

Clarence Louis Cullen. 


New York, Sept, i, ipoo. 



THIS WIRETAPPER vVAS COLOR-BLIND. 


And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $ 15,000 and His 
Reputation. 


“ I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago 
to get a young fellow who was pretty badly wanted in my 
town for a two-months’ campaign of highly successful 
check-kiting last summer,” said a Pittsburg detective 
who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. “ I 
got him all right, and he’s now doing his three years. 
I found him to be a pretty decent sort of a young geezer, 
although a born crook. I don’t remember ever having 
had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the 
trip up from New Orleans. Before we started I asked 
him if he was going to be good or if it would be necessary 
for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an on-the- 
level look and said: 

“ ‘ No, I don’t think it will. But I pass it up to you. 
I don’t want to throw you. All I ask is, don’t give me 
too much of a chance if you keep the irons off of me. I 
wouldn’t be jay enough to try a window-jumping stunt, 
but don’t give me a show to make either one of the car 
doors. If you do I may have to give you a run for it.’ 

“ Well, I could see that he would be all right without 
the cuffs, and so I didn’t put ’em on him. He rode up with 
me in the sleeper all the way from New Orleans to Pitts- 
burg — I let him do the sleeping, though, of course — and 
he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when 
I did, and none of the rest of the passengers wehe any 
the wiser. He was a clinking good talker and he told 


8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


me a lot of interesting stories of queer propositions that 
he had been up against. For instance, when we were run- 
ning through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he 
turned to me and asked me where the blue grass was. 
I told him that the term blue grass was largely orna- 
mental, and that, while the grass down there was no 
doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thorough- 
breds, I thought it was mostly green, like grass the world 
over. 

“ ‘ Well, I’m blooming glad to hear you say that,’ he 
replied. ‘ It proves that I’m not color blind on the whole 
gamut of colors, anyhow. If you’d said there really was 
blue grass in these fields we’re running through, I’d have 
given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguish- 
ing colors. But as long as the grass is green like other 
grass — well, there’s some hope for me.’ 

“ ‘ Color-blind, eh? ’ I asked him. 

“ ‘ Yes, I guess I am, more or less,’ he replied. 4 1 
never knew it, though, until last spring, and it cost me 
$15,000 to find it out.’ 

“ ‘ Expensive information,’ said I. ‘ How’d it hap- 
pen? ’ 

“ ‘ If you’ll undertake to forget about it by the time 
we get to Pittsburg, I’ll tell you,’ he said. 4 1 was fool- 
ing around one of the big towns — one of the biggest 
towns — on this side of the Mississippi last spring, when 
I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me inter- 
ested. They were the real kind — not fake tappers who 
rope fellows into giving up coin just by showing ’em 
phony instruments in shady rooms, but professionals, who 
really knew how to tap the wires and pull down the 
money. They had been working together for some time, 
and when I happened to meet them they had just pulled 
off a swell hog-killing up in Toronto and had two or three 


TAKING CHANCES. 


9 


thousand each in their clothes. They had only recently 
struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there 
before, they didn’t have to do any sleuth dodging. Nei- 
ther did I, although I was doing a bit of business in the 
check line occasionally, and was about a thousand to the 
good when I met them. We hitched up together, the 
three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me 
that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into 
their game, they thought I was good enough to be admit- 
ted to a good thing that they were about to pull off. 

One of the largest and best patronized of the pool- 
rooms of the town was ’way on the outskirts of the city. 
The duck that runs it is worth close on to a million, and 
the ticket writers have instructions never to turn any 
man’s money down, no matter how big the sum or how 
lead-pipey the cinch he appears to have. Lumps of 
$20,000 and $30,000 have frequently been taken out of 
that poolroom on single tickets, and it’s one of the few 
poolrooms where track odds are given. 

“ ‘ My two new pals had sized up the layout, and when 
I met them they already had things fixed to pull down a 
few comfortable wads. They had rented a vacant frame 
cottage about 300 yards across a big vacant lot from the 
poolroom, and, by a little night work — they were both 
practical wiremen, as well as expert telegraphers — had 
got the wire into a room on the second floor of the house 
all right. It was prairie land all around and slimly fre- 
quented territory, and they had no trouble in rigging up 
the wire paraphernalia, which they carried alongside a 
picket fence to the porch of the cottage, and thence up- 
stairs. They had the thing all tested, and every dot and 
dash that reached the poolroom registered also in the sec- 
ond floor of that cottage. 

“ ‘ One of the fellows had formerly worked in a pool- 


IO 


TAKING CHANCES. 


room himself and he had the race code down as pat as 
butter. They took me out to have a look at the layout, not 
because they wanted a dollar out of me, for they were on 
velvet, but simply because they both seemed to take a kind 
o’ shine to me, and it surely looked good. I spent two or 
three afternoons in the second floor front room where the 
layout was fixed, and the chap who was expert with the 
racing code broke the report direct from the track a dozen 
times and sent it in himself, after having mastered the 
operator’s style at the track end of the line, and the pool- 
room operator was never a bit the wiser. It was good, all 
right, that layout, and when they were all ready to begin 
work I was in on the play. 

“ ‘ We decided to make the first killing on the day the 
Belmont Stakes were to be run for at Morris Park. I 
was against their starting it off on such a big stake event, 
especially as the race looked to be such a moral for Ham- 
burg, but they said stake events were as good as selling 
races in their business, and so we had a little rehearsal 
and stood by. My end of the job was to happen in the 
poolroom. I was to locate there by a dust-covered window 
that looked out of the poolroom across the big vacant lot 
to the frame cottage where the layout was installed and 
wait for the signal. The signal was to be made by means 
of a handkerchief waved in the air by one of the fellows 
from the window. The color of the handkerchief was to 
tell the name of the winner. For instance, if Hamburg 
won a white handkerchief was to show at the second- 
story window; if Bowling Brook captured the stakes a 
yellow handkerchief was to be the signal, and so on. 
When I got the signal I was to put the money down on 
the winner, the tapper was to hold the result from the 
pool operator for five minutes to give me time to get the 
money down, and then I was just to wait for the pool- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


1 1 

room operator to announce the race. It was the easiest 
thing in life, and it would have gone through with a rush, 
not only on that race, but on a whole lot of other ones 
later on, if I hadn’t been color blind. 

“ 4 1 was on hand in the poolroom on the afternoon that 
we were to do business and I put a few dollars down on 
the first races at Morris Park, just for the sake of getting 
the ticket writers used to my face and to avert suspicion. 
I had a pretty fair line on the horses in training then and 
I won two or three out of the bets that I played simply 
on form. The fourth race on the card was for the Belmont 
Stakes, and after the third race had been confirmed and 
the first line of betting came in on the stake race I lounged 
over to the dust-colored window and looked uninterested. 
But I had the tail of my eye on the window of that frame 
cottage all the time, nevertheless. I had $2,000 of my 
pals’ money in my clothes and $1,000 of my own. I was 
a bit nervous, but I knew that I had a pipe, and I also 
knew that the poolroom people had mighty little show to 
get next. I had all kinds of a front on me then, and a 
$5,000 or even larger bet was, as I say, not so unusual in 
that poolroom as to scare ’em or cause ’em to become sus- 
picious. 

“ ‘ Well, the second line of betting came in, with Ham- 
burg the natural favorite at 4 to 5 on in the betting, 
Bowling Brook 4 to 1 against and the rest at write-your- 
own-ticket figures. The poolroom took in thousands of 
dollars of Hamburg money, for nobody in the 
big crowd that surged about the poolroom could figure 
any other horse in the race to have a chance. I 
myself thought it was a sure thing for Hamburg, 
but I wasn’t playing thinks, but cinches, and so I just 
stood at that window and waited for the signal. I was, I 
suppose, somewhat excited internally when I thought of 


12 


TAKING CHANCES. 


the possibilities of the game, but nobody knew it. The 
poolroom operator announced, 4 They’re at the post at 
Morris Park,’ and then I knew that ’ud be the last direct 
communication he’d have with Morris Park until after 
the running of the Belmont Stakes. I leaned there on that 
window, with one hand resting on my chin comfortably, 
waiting for the flutter of the handkerchief away across the 
vacant lot. The sun shone brilliantly, and the window of 
the frame cottage was in plain view, and I didn’t figure it 
as among the possibilities that I could make a mistake. 

“ ‘ Well, when the whole crowd in the poolroom had be- 
come sort o’ mute with expectancy and the betting at the 
desk was almost over, I got the signal. It was the quickest 
flash in the world, a white handkerchief, as I was per- 
fectly positive, nervously waved three times from the sec- 
ond-story window of the frame ccttage. I didn’t see my 
pal waving the handkerchief — only the flutter of the 
white handkerchief which announced that Hamburg had 
won. So, without any apparent excitement, but in the 
laziest kind of a way in the world, 1 just yawned, stretched 
my arms, and remarked to a few fellows standing near- 
by: 

“ 4 “ What’s the use of doping over the race. It’s a pipe 
for Hamburg. I’m going up and put a couple of thousand 
on Hamburg.” 

“ ‘ So I walked up to the desk, passed over six $500 bills 
and said “ Hamburg.” The ticket writer took the money 
without any visible emotion and wrote me a ticket. Then 
I walked out among the crowd to hear the calling off of 
the race, which I knew would happen within three or four 
minutes. 

“ ‘ “ They’re off for the Belmont,” the operator shouted 
in about three minutes, and then said I to myself, “ What 


TAKING CHANCES. 


13 


an exercise gallop for Hamburg ! What a dead easy way 
of picking up large pieces of money ! ” 

“ ‘ I wasn’t worried even a little bit when Bowling 
Brook was ’way in the lead in the stretch. 

Hamburg’s just laying in a soft spot right there, 
third, and when it comes to a drive, how cheap, he’ll make 
a crab like Bowling Brook look ! 

Then the operator, after the ten seconds’ delay fol- 
lowing the announcement of the horses’ positions in the 
stretch, called out : 

“ * “ Bowling Brook wins ! ” 

Say, I’m not an excitable kind of a duck, nor dead 
easy to keel over, but, on the level, my head went ’round 
and I had to grip hold of a chair top when I heard that 
announcement. I couldn’t make it out. It seemed out of 
the question. I knew that my two pals hadn’t dumped me, 
because hadn’t I played $2,000 of their money? At first 
I thought the operator made a mistake, and I waited with 
a spark of hope for the confirmation of the race. The con- 
firmation came in. Bowling Brook had walked in, and 
Hamburg had been disgracefully beaten. 

“ ‘ An hour later I met my two pals downtown. They 
greeted me with grins, and held out their hands for the 
thousands. 

“ ‘ “ Thing didn’t go through, did it ? ” I said to them. 
“ Where was the mistake, anyhow ? What was the white 
handkerchief — Hamburg’s signal — waved for ? ” 

“ ‘ They looked at me savagely. They were positive 
that I had tricked them — that I had really played Bowling 
Brook with the money and was holding it out on them. 

“ * “ White handkerchief be blowed ! ” said the man 
that had given the signal, pulling a light yellow handker- 
chief from his pocket. “ What color do you call this ? ” 

“ ‘ Well, then I saw how the mistake had been made, 


14 


TAKING CHANCES. 


and that I had made it. In the brilliant sunshine I had 
mistaken the light yellow handkerchief for a white one, 
and it was up to me. They didn’t give me a chance to get 
in a word, though, for they believed, and believe yet, I 
suppose, that I had thrown them, and they both hopped 
me at once. I had to put up the fight of my life, but I 
downed them both finally with the aid of a chair and a 
spittoon, and got away. That’s how I lost $15,000 — 
counting the winnings we’d have made had I played 
Bowling Brook that time — by being color blind.’ ” 




o 


TAKING CHANCES. 


5 


“ WHOOPING ” A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE 
WIRE. 


A Novel Method of Treating Sulky Thoroughbreds That 
Often Works Profitably. 


“ I see they hollered an old skate home and got him 
under the wire first by three lengths out at the Newport 
merry-go-round the other day,” said an old-time trainer 
out at the Gravesend paddock. “ Don’t catch the mean- 
ing of hollering a horse home? Well, it’s scaring a 
sulker pretty near out of his hide and bridle and making 
him run by sheer force of whoops let out altogether. 
This nag, Kriss Kringle, that was hollered home at New- 
port a few days ago, is a sulker from the fo t-hills. He 
was sold as an N. G. last year for $25, and at t K x ; n- 
ning of this season he prances in and wins nine or ten 
straight races right off the reel at the Western tracks, 
hopping over the best they’ve got out there. Then he 
goes wrong, declines to crawl a yard, and is turned out. 
They yank him into training again awhile back, put him 
up against the best a-running on the other side of the 
Alleghanies, and he makes ’em look like bull-pups one 
day and the next he can’t beat a fat man. He comes near 
getting his people ruled off for in-and-out kidding, and 
then, a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a bit less, he goes 
out and chews up the track record, and gets within a sec- 
ond of the world’s record for the mile and three-eighths 
I believe it was. 

“ Then, Tuesday they have him in at a mile and a six- 
teenth, with a real nippy field, as Western horses go. The 


6 


TAKING CHANCES. 


right people, knowing full well the old Springbok geld- 
ing’s propensities, shove their big coin in on him any- 
way, and take a chance on him being unable to keep up 
with a steam roller after his swell race a while before, and 
the whole crowd fall into line and bet on Kringle until 
the books give them the cold-storage countenance and 
say, ‘ Nix, no more.’ Then they get up into the stand 
and around the finishing rail and they see the aged Kriss, 
who’s a rank favorite, begin like a land crab, when he 
usually goes out from the jump and spread-eagles his 
bunch. They begin the hard-luck moan when they see 
the sour son of Springbok trailing along third in a field 
of five, and they look into each other’s mugs and chew 
about being on a dead one. Turning into the stretch, the 
old skate is a poor third, and stopping every minute, a 
plain case of sulks, like he’s put up so many times before. 
The two in front of him have got it right between them, 
when Kris comes along into the last sixteenth, still third 
by a little bit, and then the gang let out in one whoop 
and holler that could be heard four miles. It’s ‘ Wowee ! 
come on here, ye danged old buck- jumper ! ’ and 
‘ Whoop-la ! you Kringle ! ’ from nearly every one of the 
thousand leather lungs in the stand and up against the 
rail, and the surly old rogue pins his ears forward and 
hears the yelp. Then it’s all off. The old $25 cast-off 
jumps out like a scared rabbit at the sixteenth-pole. The 
nearer he gets to the stand the louder the yelping hits 
him the bigger he strides, and he collars the two in front 
of him as if they were munching carrots in their stalls, 
and romps under the string three lengths to the good. 
That’s what hollering a horse home means. It’s a game 
that can only be worked on sulkers. The yelling scares 
the sulker into running, whereas it’s liable to make a good- 
dispositioned horse stop as if sand-bagged. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


17 


“ I’ve seen the holler-’em-in gag worked often at both 
the legitimate and the outlaw tracks, and for big money. 
One of the biggest hog-slaughterings that was ever made 
at the game was when an Iroquois nag, a six-year-old 
gelding named McKeever, turned a rank outsider trick at 
Alexander Island, Va., in 1895. The boys that knew what 
was going to happen that time surely did buy it by the 
basketful for a long time afterward. McKeever was 
worth about $2 in his latter career, and not a whole lot 
more at any stage of the game, according to my way of 
sizing ’em. As a five and six-vear-old, he couldn’t even 
make the doped outlaws think they were in a race, but 
his people kept him plugging away on the chance that 
some day or other he might pick up some of the spirit of 
his sire, the royal Iroquois, and pay for his oats and 
rubbing, anyhow. When he was brought to Alexander 
Island in the spring of ’95, and tried out it was seen that 
he was just the same old truck-mule. One morning, 
after he’d been beaten a number of times by several Phila- 
delphia blocks, when at 100 to 1 or so in the books, his 
owner had him out for a bit of a canter around the ring, 
with a 140-pound stable boy on him. A lot of stable boys 
and rail birds were scattered all around the infield, as- 
sembled in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing 
grass and watching the horses at their morning work. 
This old McKeever starts around the course as if he’s 
doing a sleep-walking stunt. The boy gives him the 
goad and the bat, but it’s no good. McKeever sticks to 
his caterpillar gait, and his owner leans against the rail 
with a watch in his mitt and mumbles unholy things 
about the skate. There’s a laugh among the stable boys 
and the rail birds as McKeever goes gallumphing around. 
Then a stable lad that’s got a bit of Indian in him leans 
over the rail just as McKeever’s coming down, and lets 


i8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


out a whoop that can be heard across the Potomac. Mc- 
Keever gives a jump, and away he goes like the wind. 
It looks so funny to the rail birds along the line that 
they all take up the yelp, and McKeever jumps out faster 
at every shout. He gets to going like a real, sure-enough 
race horse by the time he has made the circuit once, and 
he keeps rights on. The owner gets next to it that it’s 
the shouting that’s keeping the old plug on the go, and 
he waves his arms and passes the word along for the 
boys to keep it up. McKeever does six furlongs in 1 114 
with the assistance of the hollering, and the owner takes 
him off the track, gives him a look-over and some extra 
attention, and smiles to himself. 

“ Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half fur- 
long race on the following day. He stations about twen- 
ty or twenty-five rail birds, all of ’em stable boys out of 
a job, in the infield, and hands them out their yelling in- 
structions. McKeever is up against one of the best fields 
of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30 
to 1 and sticks at that. His owner puts a large 
number of his pals next to what’s going to happen, 
and not a man of them plays the good thing at the 
track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles 
to the poolrooms all over the country. McKeever 
gets out in front, and he hasn’t made more than 
a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail 
throws a whoop that makes the people in the stand put 
their hands to their ears. McKeever gives a swerve and 
a side step, and away he goes like the Empire State ex- 
press. A hundred feet further, when he’s four 
lengths in the lead, and the others, including the even 
money shot, nowhere, a couple more rail birds shoot out 
another double-jointed yell, and McKeever jumps out 
again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every 100 


TAKING CHANCES. 


'9 


feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances 
on his stopping, although after the first furlong he is six 
lengths to the good, and the result is that McKeever sim- 
ply buck-jumps in, pulled double, with eight lengths of 
open daylight between him and the even money shot. The 
owner looks sad, like a man who hasn’t put a dollar down, 
and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse 
is being led to his stable. When he gets him inside his 
stall, though, the hugs and loaf sugar that fall Mc- 
Keever’s way are a heap. The old-time poolroom people 
will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good 
many of ’em, the day that McKeever was hollered home 
at old Alexander Island. 

“And, talking about Alexander Island, there were 
some funny ones yanked off over there, sure enough, 
some of them almost as funny as a few that happened over 
in New York at the legit tracks this passing season. 
Without hurling out any names, I’ll just tell you of how 
a plunger who has been a good deal talked about this 
year, on account of his big winnings, got the dump-and- 
the-ditch at the hands of a poor-but-honest-not owner at 
Alexander Island in the same year of 1895. This plunger 
wasn’t such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now, 
but he was some few, and he generally had enough up 
his sleeve in order to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts ; 
which is to say that he had a winning way about him, 
and access to everything that was doing at that outlaw 
track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their 
figure with a slight scaling down, according to his own 
idea of what was coming to them for being kind to him. 
He was wise and he was haughty, and toward the windup 
of that Alexander Island season he fell into the notion, 
apparently, that things had to be done his way or the 
kickers fade out of the game. 


20 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ This poor owner that I’m talking about went on to 
Alexander Island with an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all 
except one filly, that was real good, but a bit high in 
flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could as a matter 
of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on 
edge, and she had the additional advantage of not be- 
ing known all about. The poor owner has his own boy 
along with him, and he’s pretty hard up. He sticks this 
filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going 
after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He 
knows that the filly isn’t right, but he dopes it that she 
can beat the lot pitted against her, anyhow, and he really 
means her to win. He tells his boy to take her right out 
in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case 
her flesh stops her the rest’ll never be able to get near 
her. That’s the arrangement right up until post time. 
The filly — well, suppose we call her Juliet — is not very 
well known at Alexander Island, and she has 5 to I 
against her. 

“ Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about 
Juliet being, as I say, a pretty wise proposition, but he 
doesn’t think she can win in her condition, and, anyhow, 
he has something doing on another one in the race, he has 
so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of ’em, 
except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play. 
The plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him : 

“ ‘ My son, your baby won’t do to-day.’ 

“ ‘ She’ll make a stab, though,’ said the owner. * I need 
the cash, being several shy of paying my feed bills. The 
game has been throwing me lately. She’s going to try.’ 

“ 4 You need the purse, hey? ’ said the plunger. ‘ That’s 
not much money. Only $200, ain’t it? How’d $500 
do?’ 

“ ‘ Spot coin ? 9 asks the impecunious owner. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


21 


Spot coin after my weanling gets the money/ 
You’re on,’ says the poor-but-honest-not owner. 
‘ I’m not any more phony than my neighbors, but it’s a 
case of real dig with me just now. Juliet’ll finish in the 
ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you’ve got turning 
the trick ? ’ 

It’s like getting money in a letter,’ says the plunger. 

“ ‘ All right,’ says the poor owner, ‘ you can walk 
around to my stall and push me the five centuries after 
they’re in.’ 

“ The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet’s head was 
yanked off, with the boy’s toes tickling her ears. She 
could have won in a walk, short of work as she was, but 
the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that the 
plunger’s good thing went through all right. 

“ After the race the plunger, who had made a great 
big thing out of it, hunted up the poor owner and beefed 
about the $500. He said that he hadn’t been able to get 
as much money on his good one as he had expected and 
asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The 
plunger’s poor mouth doesn’t tickle the poor owner a 
little bit, but he is a pretty foxy piece of work himself, 
and he takes the three hundred without letting on a par- 
ticle that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes 
away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for 
good, and the poor owner makes sundry and divers reso- 
lutions within himself, to the general effect that the next 
time he does business with that plunger he’ll know it. 

“ Well, the poor owner doesn’t race his good filly again 
for a couple of weeks, and all the time she’s getting good. 
He gives her her work at about 3 o’clock every morning, 
in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets onto it just how 
good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks 
after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He 


22 


TAKING CHANCES. 


knows that she’s going to win, and with his other skates 
he has picked up nearly a thousand wherewith to play 
the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the race the 
plunger comes to him again. 

“ ‘ I see you’ve got that nice little girl of yours in to- 
morrow,’ he says. ‘ How good is she ? ’ 

“ ‘ She’s got a show for the big end of it,’ says the poor 1 
owner. 

“ ‘ Urn,’ says the plunger. ‘ Well, she’ll only be at 5 to 
1, whereas I’ve got a cinch in that that’ll be as good as 
15 to 1. Do you think we can do a little business? ’ 

“ ‘ On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,’ says the 
poor owner, chewing a straw. ‘ Maybe I’ll be able to see 
my way to delivering the goods for a thousand down. 
Otherwise I win.’ 

“ The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasive- 
ness, oiliness, bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor 
owner. 

“ ‘ Why,’ he says, ‘ I can buy all the Juliets from here 
to Kentucky and back for a thousand.’ 

“ ‘ Yes,’ says the poor owner, ‘ but you can’t shove a 15 
to I shot through every day, either. Let’s not talk about 
it any more. You’ve got my terms. Thousand down, 
right now, and Juliet will also ran. No thousand, 
Juliet walks, and I’ll get the coin anyhow by betting on 
her.’ 

“ He got the thousand two hours before the race was 
run. The poor owner looked Juliet over, and called his 
boy into a dark corner of the stable. 

“ ‘ Take her out in front, son,’ he said, ‘ and tow-rope 
them. Don’t let ’em get within a block of you. I’ll send 
your mother a couple o’ hundred after you fetch her 
home.’ 

“ ‘ She’d win with a dummy on her,’ says the kid. 


Taking Chances. 


*3 

“ Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thou- 
sand he already has in his kick, and the thousand the 
beefing plunger has given him, and spraddles it all over 
the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1. 

“ Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger, 
with his mouth twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet. 
All he gets is a line of chile con carne conversation, and, 
finally, a puck in the eye. 

“ ‘ Do others or they’ll do you’ isn’t the way they used 
to teach it when I went to Sunday-school,’ concluded 
the old-time trainer, ‘ but there are occasions when the 
rule just has to be twisted that way.’ ” 


H 


TAKING CHANCES. 


JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY. 

A Bottled-up Cinch That Came Off at One of the Chicago 
Tracks. 


“ The first bet that I ever put down on a horse race,” 
said a horse owner and trainer at an uptown cafe the other 
night, “ was on a horse that stood at ioo to I in the bet- 
ting. It was also the first race I ever saw run by thor- 
oughbreds. I was clerking in a Long Island City grocery 
store for $8 a week at the time, and I didn’t know a race- 
horse from a ton of coal. I got a couple of my fingers 
crushed between two salt fish boxes one morning, and I 
had to lay off from work. I didn’t want to hang around 
my room, and didn’t know what to do with myself, and 
so when a no-account young fellow I knew suggested that 
I go over with him to Monmouth Park and have a look at 
the races, I fell in with the proposition. Besides the re- 
mains of my previous week’s pay, about $3, I had $20 
saved up out of my wages, and I kept this in one $20 note 
in my inside vest pocket. After paying for round-trip 
tickets for my friend and myself, and for two tickets of 
admission to the race grounds, I was practically broke 
with the exception of a few cents, for I didn’t count the 
$20 as available assets. I intended to hang on to that un- 
broken. Well, I found that all my sporty friend wanted 
of me was to have me pay his way on the train and into 
the grounds, for he promptly lost me as soon as we got 
by the gate. I felt pretty sore at this treatment, not that I 
wanted his help, for I hadn’t the least idea of doing any 
betting with my savings, but I didn’t cotton to the notion 


TAKING CHANCES. 


25 

of being played for a good thing and then thrown that 
way. 

I walked around among the crowd with my hands in 
my pockets, wondering a good deal over the dope talk 
of the ducks that knew all about the horses and their pre- 
ferred weights, distances, riders, and so on; it was all 
Greek to me then. Finally I was shouldered and jostled 
into the betting ring. It wasn’t long before I began to 
rubberneck at the prices laid against the horses on the 
bookies’ blackboards. Although I didn’t know anything 
about the nags then, I found out afterward, when I had 
made a study of the game and got a little next to it, that 
this race I made my first bet on was composed of a cheap 
mess of fourteen selling platers. They were at all kinds 
of prices, from 4 to 5 on to 100 to 1 against. The latter 
price was laid about three of ’em. I didn’t exactly under- 
stand what the 100 to 1 meant, and so I asked a fellow 
standing near by to explain it. He looked me over out of 
the slants of his lamps, thinking, probably, that I was 
stringing him. When he saw that I was a green one he 
told me that the 100 to 1 meant that if a 100 to 1 shot won 
that I had put a dollar on I’d be $100 ahead of the game. 
This looked pretty good to me. I didn’t know anything 
about horse form or horse quality then, and I thought that 
one of ’em had just as much chance as another to win. 
So I picked out the 100 to 1 shot whose name I liked best 
and elbowed my way up to a booky’s stand to put a dollar 
down on it, holding my $20 bill tightly gripped in my 
hand. I. passed the twenty up to the bookmaker — he went 
broke, and has been a dead ’un for a good many years 
now — and said : 

“ ‘ Give me a dollar’s worth of that fourth horse from 
the top — that one with the 100 to 1 chalked before his 
name.’ 


2 6 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ The booky looked down at me contemptuously, with- 
out accepting the twenty I proffered him, and said : 

“ ‘ I don’t want no dollar bets.’ 

“ Well, this made me feel pretty cheap, especially as all 
of the ducks back of me, waiting to pass up their fifties 
and hundreds gave me the laugh. I didn’t like to be shown 
up in that public way. I was just as sore at that time 
about being made to look like thirty cents as I am to-day. 
So I did a bit of lightning thinking. ‘ Twenty’s a big 
bunch to me,’ I thought, ‘ and I’ve had to hop out of bed 
at half past 3 in the morning to go to meat market a good 
many times to get it together; but I’ll be hanged if I’m 
going to let this fellow get away with his idea of making 
me look small, even if I haven’t got a show on earth.’ So 
I passed the bill up to him again, saying: 

“ ‘ All right, there billionaire. Just gimme $20 worth 
of that fourth horse from the top, with 100 to 1 chalked 
before his name.’ 

“ I was chagrined to find that this strong play didn’t 
help me a little bit. The booky only grinned as he chanted, 
* Two thousand dollars to $20 on the fourth one from the 
top,’ and the chap that wrote me the ticket grinned back 
at him, and the crowd behind me again gave me the 
hoarse hoot, loud and long continued. I’ll bet I was blush- 
ing on the bottom of my feet when I snatched the ticket 
and hurried away from that booky’s stall, with the 
chuckles of the hot-looking members ringing in my ears. 
Well, my horse walked in. 

“ When I went to cash my ticket for $2,020 the booky 
sized me up, with all kinds of wrath in his eyes. 

“ * A good make-up you’ve got for a Rube,’ he said to 
me. * You’re good. That’s the most scientific commis- 
sioner act I’ve seen pulled off up to date, and I’ve been 
at this game ever since Hickory Jim was a two-year-old.’ 


TAKING CHANCES. 


2 7 


“ I didn’t know what he was talking about, the word 
commissioner was particularly mysterious to me, but I 
wasn’t going to let him put it on me again, and I like to 
have drove him crazy with the slow grin I gave him. He 
chucked the bundle of $2,020 at me, and I just walked 
backward with it in my hands and grinning at him. He 
was the maddest-looking man I ever saw, before or since. 
I didn’t go back to my grocery job, nor did I hop in and 
slough off my $2,000 on a game I didn’t know anything 
about. I didn’t play another horse that year, but went in 
and made a study of the game, going to the tracks every 
day to see ’em run and to think the whole institution over. 
It has taken me all of the years that have passed since to 
find out that the study of horse racing don’t amount to a 
row of spuds, that study doesn’t beat the game. I simply 
had a series of lucky plays after I figured it that I knew 
all there was to be learned about horse racing, and those 
plays put me on the velvet I’ve had to a greater or less 
extent ever since. I don’t often play them now — I’ve got 
a fairly nifty string, and I run ’em and let the other fel- 
lows do the guessing. 

“ What set me to thinking about this first play of mine 
was a letter I received the other day from an owner, who’s 
racing his string down at New Orleans, about the win of 
that plug Covington, Ky., the other day. The price laid 
against Covington, Ky., was at first 150 to 1, and the 
rail birds in the know battered it down to 60 to 1 at post 
time, throwing all kinds of misery into the layers when 
the plater romped in, after being practically left at the 
post. My friend says in his letter that George Wheelock 
declined to take a dollar bet from one of the wise rail birds 
on Covington, Ky., at 150 to 1, and that the young fellow 
got chesty, dug into the pocket where he kept his silver, 
found $2 in quarters and halves, and handed the $3 to 


28 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Wheelock on Covington, Ky., to win. Wheelock took the 
money and it cost him $450. Wheelock, my friend writes 
me, has been poked in the ribs over the thing by his fel- 
low-layers ever since. 

“ I don’t often pay any attention to good things/’ con- 
tinued the turfman, “ and it’s rarer still that I am com- 
pelled to regret my indifference to the bottled-up cinches, 
but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I over- 
looked a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me 
several minutes’ hard thinking. I didn’t lose any money 
over it, but it’s hard to think of the inside chance I neg- 
lected on that occasion to make an old-fashioned hog kill- 
ing. I had four or five of my three-year-olds out at Lake- 
side and was pulling a purse down with ’em once in a 
while, and depending on the purses to keep me even with 
the game and strong for hay money. I wasn’t doing any 
betting, I took my confirmed indifference to good things 
along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back 
at the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so, 
for if there’s any place in the country outside of the out- 
law tracks where good things do have a habit of going 
through right often, then that place is Chicago. I didn’t 
profit by any of ’em that were made to stick last fall, how- 
ever, although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from 
20 to 1 to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping 
with all the money. A lot of men I knew out at Lakeside 
— fellows with small strings, none of which ever won or 
got in the money — were on all kinds of velvet by giving 
ear to the inside good things, but they didn’t make me 
jealous a little bit. I’m in the game for keeps, and that’s 
more than can be said for the good-thing players. 

“ Anyhow, for all that, I’m still regretting that I over- 
looked this chance I’m speaking of. I was in a Dearborn 
street hang-out for racing men one night, along toward 


TAKING CHANCES. 


29 


the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy came inside 
and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me. 
I went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for 
me. He was employed as a general stable roustabout by 
the owner of a California string, and I had befriended the 
man in the paddock a few days before when he was en- 
gaged in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was 
getting the worst of the scrap when I stepped in and 
pulled his antagonist off of him. It didn’t amount to any- 
thing, this, but the tank stable hand that was waiting for 
me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain seemed 
to feel grateful to me for it. 

“ ‘ Hello, Bill,’ said I to him, ' what’s up? ’ 

“ 1 Got fired this afternoon,’ he replied. 

“ 1 Broke ? ’ I asked him. 

“ ‘ I didn’t hunt you up to touch you, boss,’ he said. 4 1 
got a good thing I want to give to you. You’ve been 
square to me. The good thing’s to come off to-morrow, 
and nobody’s on. I’m preaching on it because I’ve been 
dropped from the track just for getting a skate on, and 
because I want to put you next; that’s on the level with 
me.’ 

“ ‘ You can pass me up,’ I told the man. ‘ I don’t play 
the sure ones, you know.’ 

“ 4 But this is ripe, and it’s going to happen,’ persisted 
the man. ‘ It’s a baby. It’s a looloo. It’s a cachuca. It’s 
that filly Mazie V. in the two-year-old race to-morrow. 
You know who’s stable she belongs in. I heard the chaw 
about it this afternoon before I got fired, and they didn’t 
get on to it that I was listening. Mazie V.’s going to walk 
in to-morrow. No dope, but she’s fit. She worked three- 
quarters in .15 flat early yesterday morning when nobody 
was looking, and she’s on edge. They’re going to burn up 
the books with it. I know that nobody can tout you, and 


30 


TAKING CHANCES. 


I’m not trying to tout you. But here’s a chance, and I 
came down to let you know.’ 

“ Well, of course I had to thank the man, but I couldn’t 
help but grin at him at that. 

“ ‘ How long have you been rubbing ’em down ? ’ I 
asked him. 

“ ‘ I’ve been around the horses since I was ten years 
old,’ he replied. 

“ ‘ And still so easy? ’ I couldn’t help but say. 4 Well, 
I won’t say anything of what you’ve told me so as to queer 
the price, if there’s any play on Mazie V., but, of course, 
as for myself, I pass it up ; thanks all the same to you. 
Need any money? ’ 

“ No, he didn’t want any money, he said. He had 
simply hunted me up to put me on to one of the best 
things of the meeting, and he shambled off. 

“ When the books opened for that two-year-old race 
the next day, Mazie V., a clean-limbed filly that had never 
shown a particle of class, opened up the rank outsider in a 
big field, which included some very fairish two-year-olds. 
I looked the books over, not because I was betting, but 
just out of habit, and I saw that every nag in the race was 
being played but Mazie V., the 150 to 1 shot. 

“ ‘ If they’re going to burn the bookies out on Mazie 
V., I thought, amusedly, ‘ it’s a wonder the stable connec- 
tions don’t take some of this good 150 to 1.’ 

“ As I was thinking this over, the ex-stableman who 
had hunted me up with the Mazie V. good thing the night 
before plucked me by the sleeve. He was several times 
as drunk as an owl, and I didn’t care to talk with him. 

“ ‘ Are you down ? ’ he asked me, lurching. ‘ Because ’f 
you ain’t, you’re campin’ out, an’ that’s all there is to it.’ 

“ 4 Go and take a sleep,’ I told him, and passed on. But 
he didn’t want any sleep. Instead, he drunkenly mounted 


TAKING CHANCES. 


3 


a box that he found in the betting ring, and started to 
make an address to the hustling bettors. 

Hey ! ’ he shouted, ‘ if you mugs want to git aboard 
for the barbecue, play Mazie V. She's going to be cut 
loose. She’s a i to io chance. She’s going through. It’s a 
cinch.’ 

“ The crowd guyed him. 

It’s so good,’ shouted the poor devil, ‘ that I just 
put the last $8 I got on earth on her to win — not to show, 
but to win. Hey ! I’m not touting. I’m trying to give you 
all a winout chance. You needn’t think because I ain’t 
togged out that I’m a dead one on this. Even if I have got 
a load along, why ’ 

“ Just then somebody, probably an interested party, 
kicked the box from under the man and he went sprawl- 
ing. That closed him up. The crowd roared, but not a 
man in the gang, of course, put down a dollar on Mazie 
V. If any of the pikers had even a dream of doing such a 
thing the stable hand’s drunken recommendation of the 
filly switched them off. Just before the horses went to the 
post the $5 bills of people that weren’t pikers, but stable 
connections, went into the ring in such quantities on 
Mazie V. that she closed at ioo to i in a few of the books, 
and at much smaller figures in most of the others. 

“ W ell, the way that little filly Mazie V. put it all over 
her field was something ridiculous. The race was some- 
thing easy for her. There was nothing to it but Mazie V. 
She got away from the post almost dead last, and then 
picked up her horses at leisure, revelling in the heavy go- 
ing, and, loping up in the last sixteenth, walked in with 
daylight between her and the favorite. It was one of the 
killings of the Chicago racing season, and the books were 
soaked to over $20,000 on $5 bets. 

“ ‘ That certainly is hard money to lose, to say the least/ 


3 * 


TAKING CHANCES. 


I heard poor Mike Dwyer mumble on the day that he took 
i to 15 on Hanover, putting down $45,000 to win $3,000, 
and Hanover got himself disgracefully beaten by Lag- 
gard. And that’s what I think about that Mazie V. good 
thing — hard money not to have won.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


33 


THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT. 

'But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One 
Day, the Bookmakers Were Damaged. 

An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of 
yearlings and keeping up a lot of old campaigners out at 
the old Ivy City track near Washington, was chewing 
wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking aloud. 

“ One of the things that I can’t exactly figure out,” said 
he, “ is whether I’m a ringer-worker or on the level. That 
proposition has been bothering me a heap in the middle of 
nights right along since the fall of ’87. I got into the cen- 
ter of a game then that has kept me apologizing to myself 
ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn’t a sure- 
enough proper ringer. And I didn’t put him over the 
plate, either. My end of it was only to cop out a few, 
and all I had to do was to 

“ Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Ken- 
tucky for the man I was training for in 1885. There were 
some Fonso bull-pups to be auctioned off, and the boss 
wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso, don’t you? 
He’s the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the 
blue ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three 
for being still the finest specimen of a thoroughbred in 
Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple of Fonsos and I 
went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one 
I got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore 
hoofs. He was out of a good mare, but he upset all the 
calculations of breeding. He was the worst seed in looks 
that ever I clapped my eyes on ; and I’ve been fooling 


34 


TAKING CHANCES. 


with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an 
angular swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and 
as fast as a caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn’t ex- 
pect ever to make anything out of him, but I was pretty 
flush then, and I didn’t want to see a Fonso pulling a dray 
if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything 
out of him. That cold was a joke. The whole crowd gave 
him the hoot when he was led into the auction ring, and I 
couldn’t hold down a grin myself when I sized up the poor 
mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great sire that ever 
crawled into an auction ring for a bed. The whole gang 
jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn’t 
blame ’em. But I led the colt out, put him in a stall, and 
then went back to the sale. I got two high-grade Fonsos 
for my boss, and they won themselves out for him twenty 
times over in the next three years. But they don’t figure 
in this story. 

“ I went at my freak Fonso right away to see if any- 
thing could be done with him. I devoted more time to that 
one than I did to any of my two-year-olds or three-year- 
olds in training, hoping that he might have something up 
his sleeve and that it could be dug out of him with careful 
handling. It was no go. I couldn’t get him to do a quarter 
in better than 35 seconds. Bat or steel had no effect on 
him. He had a hide like a rhinoceros, and he made the 
exercise boys weary. Here was a colt born a Fonso, out 
of a mare that had been of stake class when in training, 
that was no better than a truck-horse, and at the end of 
two weeks I gave him up. A circus came along to Lex- 
ington, where I had my string, and with the circus, in 
charge of the performing horses, was an old trainer friend 
of mine from the St. Louis track who had been chased 
into the show business by a long run of hard luck. I took 


TAKING CHANCES. 


35 


him out to look over my bunch, and when he came to the 
Fonso colt he laughed. 

Where did you get that world-beater ? ’ he asked me. 

“ 4 Oh, that’s a Fonso colt that I picked up down the line 
at a sale a while back/ I told him. 

“ He didn’t exactly call me a liar, but he looked as if he 
wanted to. Then I told him all about the colt. Like most 
trainers, he had the blood and breeding bug pretty bad 
under his bonnet, and he tried to throw it into me that I 
wasn’t giving the colt a fair shake. Told me a lot of stuff 
that I already knew about some great racehorses that 
couldn’t get out of their own way as yearlings, and tried 
to convince me that this Fonso thing of mine was liable 
to fool me up a whole lot as a two-year-old. 

44 4 Well, he doesn’t get oats at my expense until he’s 
ready to race,’ said I. 4 If you think his chances at next 
year’s stakes are so devilish big, he’s your’s for a quarter 
of a hundred.’ 

44 4 I’ve got you,’ said my friend with the show. 4 I’ll 
take him along, anyhow. It’s worth that much to a man 
to be able to say to himself as he smokes his pipe after 
his work’s done that he’s got a Fonso colt of his own. And 
I’ll bet you an even $ioo that I get one race out of that 
swayback, anyhow, before he’s two years older.’ 

44 1 didn’t take him. I was disgusted with my hundred 
dollars’ worth of Fonso, and I was glad to get the $25 
that my friend in the show business gave me for him. He 
took the mutt away with the show, and I forgot all about 
that sentimental purchase of mine for a couple of years. 

44 1 hadn’t any killing luck during those two years. In 
fact, the game went against me pretty strong. Most of the 
string that I had in training went wrong or showed them- 
selves platers, and when the boss decided to quit racing I 
was up against it completely. I had two or three platers 


36 


TAKING CHANCES. 


of my own that made their oats money and a little more, 
and these I raced on the St. Louis track, pulling down a 
purse once in a while, and getting second money often 
enough to keep me in coffee and sinkers. When the St. 
Louis game closed down at the end of September, a num- 
ber of us that had small strings struck out for the bush- 
meetings in nearby States. I shipped my three to a me- 
tropolis on the banks of the Missouri River where a State 
fair was about to be held and where $200 purses were of- 
fered for running races. I figured my three lobsters to be 
as good as any for the bush-meetings, and I calculated on 
getting one or two of the purses at this State Fair. 

“ I got into the town — they call it a city out there — 
with my horses three days before the State Fair was to 
begin. On the day that I got there a circus that had been 
exhibiting in the town for two days wound up its season 
and started East for its winter quarters. I saw the 
boarded-up wagons passing through the streets on their 
way to the freight depot. I was watching the dead pro- 
cession when my circus friend, the man on whom I had 
worked off my no-account Fonso colt, picked me out of 
the crowd and came up to me. The circus moving out 
was the one he had been attached to when last I saw him 
and sold him the colt. 

“ * Hello,’ said I, 4 how many stakes have you pulled 
down with that one up to date ? ’ 

“ He dug his hands into his pockets and grinned but 
made no reply. 

“ ‘ Have you still got that colt ? ’ I asked him. 

“ ‘ Yep,’ said he. 

“ 4 Going to take him along with you to the show’s win- 
ter headquarters ? ’ I inquired. 

Sh-sh-sh ! ’ said he. ‘ Fm not going along with the 
show. I quit ’em here. Season’s over. Fve got some busi- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


37 


ness here next week, anyhow. I’m going to race that 
Fonso on the Uncle Tom circuit, beginning with the State 
Fair here/ 

“ Of course, I couldn’t do anything else but prod him, 
and I did. 

“ ‘ Fact/ said he, seriously. ‘ Got him entered in the 
first race on the card — mile/ 

“ ‘ I’ve got one in that myself,’ I told him. ‘ Shall we 
fix it up between us? ’ I added, just for fun. 

“ * You might do worse, at that,’ said he, sizing me up 
out of the tail of his eye. ‘ I’m going to win in a walk.’ 

“ Then I hooted him a good deal more, of course. He 
let me get through, and he then took me off into a corner 
and told me some things. 

“ ‘ That plug like to have broken my heart ever since I 
got him,’ he said. ‘ I’ve had him in four or five times al- 
ready at the bush meetings, but he was never one, two, 
three, until the last time, when he took it into his head to 
run when they got into the stretch and was only beaten 
a nose by a pretty fair bush plug. This was two months 
ago. The trouble with this Fonso colt you sawed off 
on me is that he’s a sulker. He’s got the speed in his 
crazy-shaped bones, but he won’t let it out. Well, between 
you and me — and I put you next because I know you 
want a dollar or so as bad as I do — I’m confident that 
with a douse out of a pail and a bit of a punch with a 
needle just before post time, he can beat anything out this 
way. He’s out at the Fair grounds now, and I worked 
him a mile in .48 this morning. He roars like a blast 
furnace, but his wind is all right, nevertheless. He’s still 
as ugly as ever, if not uglier. I put you next, because it 
might be a good thing for you to scratch your nag out of 
that first race and cotton to your cast-off. There’ll be a 


33 


TAKING CHANCES. 


big price on account of his wheezing and his ragged 
looks/ 

“ ‘ How did you enter him? ’ I asked. ‘ As a Fonso? ’ 

“ ‘Not on your natural/ said he. ‘ Any old thing’s 
eligible, and I simply told ’em I didn’t know the mutt’s 
breeding, that I had him along with me in the show, and 
just had an idea he might run a little.’ 

“ Well, son, the winter was beginning to loom up, and 
I wasn’t ulstered and swaddled out for it. I went out to 
the Fair grounds with my friend and looked over the 
Fonso freak. My friend called him Star Boarder, because 
he’d been eating circus oats and hay for two years with- 
out ever doing a lick of work to pay for his fodder. The 
colt had, of course, filled out and lengthened, but he was 
still as homely a beast ever I clapped an eye on. We 
had him led out on the six-furlong track, and an exercise 
boy who weighed about 145 pounds took him over the 
course at top speed. The nag did it in 1.2 1, and the 
performance tickled me. The colt had a crazy, jerky, un- 
even stride, and seemed to go sideways, but he certainly 
got over the ground lively with that weight up. I saw 
the chance, and I needed the coin. 

Can he keep that gait up for the mile ? ’ I asked his 
owner. 

He wants four miles,’ he replied. ‘ His roaring is 
a bluff.’ 

“ ‘ Count me in, then/ said I. ‘ He’ll walk in that 
race. I’ll scratch mine out/ 

“We went along the line and looked over the other 
horses, especially the twelve that were entered for that 
first race, and, although there were some good-lookers in 
the bunch, they had been campaigned heavily for months, 
and were a jaded lot. I scratched my pretty fair horse 
out of that first race. Then I sold the poorest nag of my 


TAKING CHANCES. 


39 


three platers to a banker in town for a stylish saddle 
horse. Got $400 for him. I wanted the money for bet- 
ting purposes. 

“ There was a big crowd out at the Fair grounds on 
the day the racing began. Four books were on, all of 
them run by representatives of big gambling houses in 
town. My friend had the Fonso colt taken out of his 
stall and slowly trotted around the track about three- 
quarters of an hour before the first race, that in which 
the horse was entered. The gathering crowd in the 
stand laughed over the horse’s awkward, climbing gait 
and clumsy appearance. That’s what we wanted ’em to 
do. We wanted the price, or the horse would have been 
kept in his stall. 

“ Only seven of the field originally entered for the race 
went to the post. Now, I didn’t have anything to do 
with conditioning Star Boarder, and I never belonged to 
the syringe gang, anyhow ; I kept strictly away from the 
paddock and the barns before the race, because I didn’t 
want to see anything. But the way that Fonso colt, with 
all his clumsiness, held his head up and pranced around 
as he was going to the post, with a pretty fair boy that 
I brought along with me from St. Louis on his back, by 
the way, was certainly great. Dope makes a horse about 
as perky as three drinks of whisky makes a man who’s 
been off the booze for a long while. The trouble is that the 
dope doesn’t last so long in a horse as it does in a man, 
and I was pretty anxious for a prompt start, so that the 
dope in this homely cast-off of mine wouldn’t die out. 

“ The betting on Star Boarder opened at 15, 6, and 3. 
There was an even-money favorite, a horse that had pulled 
down a number of mile purses at St. Louis, a 2 to 1 
shot, and the others slid up to the nag my friend and I 
wanted to have win \ Star Boarder being the rank out- 


40 


TAKING CHANCES. 


sider at 15 to 1. I put my $400 down on him with the 
four booked all three ways, $200 to win, $100 for the 
place, and $100 to show. In the morning my friend 
handed me $200 of his savings from the circus business 
to bet. I played his coin $100 to win and $100 a place. 
I had hardly got the money down before I heard a big 
whoop of laughter from the stand, and I rushed out to see 
what was the matter. Star Boarder was running away. 
There had been a false break, and the fool plug had kept 
right on going. He had a mouth like forged steel, and the 
boy couldn’t do anything with him. I stood and damned 
Fonso and all his tribe to the last generation, and I could 
see my friend in the paddock shaking his fist and grinding 
his teeth. 

“ ‘ Oh, well,’ said I to myself, * it’s all off, and it serves 
you bully good and right for not racing your own plugs 
and letting these con and dope grafts go to the devil.’ 

“ The horse went the full length of the course before 
he was pulled up, and then he was roaring and wheezing 
like a sea-lion. The crowd laughed, and the books gave 
the post-time bettors all the 60 to 1 against Star Boarder 
that they wanted — which, of course, was none. 

“ I went back to the paddock then, while the horses 
were gyrating at the post, and found the brute’s owner. 
I laid him open. 

“ 4 To blazes with casting up ! ’ he said. 4 Isn’t the 
last of my cash on the skate, too? ’ 

44 1 felt like ten cents’ worth of dog’s meat when I 
slunk back to the stand to see ’em get off. After fifteen 
minutes’ delay at the post— the starter was a farmer — 
and Star Boarder blowing like a sand-blast and the foam 
standing all over him from that little six-furlong sprint, 
away they went in a line, Star Boarder in the lead ! Star 
Boarder at the quarter by a length ! Star Boarder at the 


TAKING CHANCES. 


41 


half by a length! Star Boarder at the three-quarters by 
two lengths ! Star Boarder in the stretch by three lengths ! 
And if that dog-goned, knock-kneed, bone-spavined, no- 
account maiden Fonso colt didn’t just buck-jump under 
the wire by six clear lengths of open daylight, you can feed 
me hay and carrots until the next spring meeting and I’ll 
only say thank you kindly, sir ! 

“ I can’t, as I say, make out whether that was a case of 
ringing or not. Anyhow, it was up to the State fair peo- 
ple to make the holler if any was coming, wasn’t it? They 
didn’t. The Rube bookmakers did, but they weren’t sus- 
tained, and they had to dive into their satchels. Star 
Boarder is over in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to- 
day, pulling an old lady around in a phaeton, and still 
holding down the distinction of being the homliest son of 
one of the handsomest sires in the history of the American 
stud.” 


42 


TAKING CHANCES. 


HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER. 


He Salts a ioo to i Shot Away for a Good Thing and Is 
Steered Off. 


“ Washington, as I remember it, was a pretty nice 
old jogger of a town,” said an old-time trainer who got 
in at Bennings, the race-track near Washington, a few 
days ago with a well-known string of horses in prepara- 
tion for the spring meeting there. “ I’d like to have a 
look at it again by daylight. Got in this time after dark 
and came right out here before sunrise. First time 
I’d hit Washington for five years — since the fall meet- 
ing at St. Asaph in 1894. I surely would like to have 
another look around Washington. But I guess I’ll have 
to pass it up. I’m not hunting for bother nowadays.” 

The paddock in which he stood is only a few minutes’ 
run by train from Washington. It seemed odd, therefore, 
that he did not step on a train and run over to Wash- 
ington, since, as he said, he hankered for another sight 
of it. He was asked about this : 

“ Well,” he replied, “ I’m waiting for five fellows that I 
used to know over in Washington to die. When they’ve all 
cashed in, maybe I’ll have a chance to look around Wash- 
ington again. But I understand that they’re all alive 
and on edge now, and I don’t exactly feel like running 
into them. I know that I’d irever be able to square my- 
self for a thing that happened down at St. Asaph during 
that fall meeting in 1894, so what’s the use of stacking 
up against the bunch and wasting wind? 

“ I had a small string of dead ones at that St. Asaph 


TAKING CHANCES. 


43 


meeting. I didn’t get oats money out of them. That 
year was the frost of my life, anyhow. I started 
in around the New York tracks in the spring with 
a bundle of three thousand or so that I had hauled 
down by backing ’em out on the coast during the winter 
meeting, and I began to melt before the leaves commenced 
to show up on the trees. There was nothing doing for me. 
I couldn’t get down right. Nearly a dozen good things 
that pals of mine with strings had got into the pink 
of it to send over the plate at long prices wound up 
among the also rans and the crimp those things took in 
my wad was something ridiculous. I only handled a few 
horses during the summer meetings that year on the 
metropolitan tracks. They were all crabs and did no 
good. So I had to plug along by shying a ten or twenty 
into the ring when I heard of something that looked nice. 
I couldn’t even make this clubbing game go through. 
The books got two out of three of my slips of the green, 
and I got to wondering how it would feel to drive a 
truck. They certainly had me down that year. 

“ When the fall meeting at Morris Park wound up 
I had $200 and a headache. I was figuring on how I 
could take this down to the winter meetings in the South 
and run it up to something worth while, when the owner 
of the bunch of dead ones I spoke of came along and 
asked me to take ’em down to St. Asaph and try to get 
a race or two out of them. I knew they were lobsters, 
all of these horses, and I was ugly enough to tell the 
owner that when I wanted a job handling cattle I’d go 
down to West street and get one, with a sea voyage to 
Glasgow or London thrown in. There wasn’t a horse in 
the lot that could beat my old aunt in Ireland over the plate 
for money or marbles; but I decided to take them down 
to St. Asaph anyhow, just for the sake of keeping on the 


44 


TAKING CHANCES. 


inside of the game and finding out if there was anything 
going on that would enable me to run that small shoe- 
string of mine into a tannery. So I took them down to 
that Virginia clay course across the Potomac and fixed 
them up the best I knew how. They wouldn’t do. St. 
Asaph was getting some good horses straight from the 
Eastern tracks then and my platers were never in the 
hunt — never, one, two, six, in fact. Worse than that, the 
books began taking my little $2 and $5 bets away from 
me right from the gateway, and I could see a winter 
ahead in New York with all the trimmings cut out. I 
met a dozen or so of pretty square chaps in Washington, 
business men that, liked to see ’em run and that used 
to ask me occasionally what I thought. I landed most 
of them right on several dead good things without ever 
getting a dollar on myself from want of nerve, my pile 
was so low, and they made good, all right, when these 
things went through. But I was bunking up with such 
a hoodoo that I sloughed off even this rake-off, and when 
the thing happened that I am going to tell you about 
I only had $70 left out of the cozy cush I had started in 
the season with. 

“ Now, I’ve been at this game, on both sides of the 
fence, for more than twenty years, and, if any man is, 
I’m dead next to the fact that the horse game is hard 
and craggy. I never yet was guilty of looking upon the 
running game as something easy. Yet I’m bound to ad- 
mit that I often get what you can call, if you want to, a 
hunch on a horse. Something -that a plug does in his 
running, even if he doesn’t get near the money, takes 
my eye, and from thinking about it I get a hunch on 
him. I don’t get a hunch like this every day, or every 
week or month, for that matter, but I’ve noticed that 
these hunches of mine have gone through nine times 


TAKING CHANCES. 


45 


out of ten during the past twenty years or so. Well, 
there was a horse called Jodan that had run in two or 
three six-furlong sprints at Morris Park that fall, and 
I had liked his work. He was out of the money in both 
of those races, but I liked the way he went at his work. 
That horse Jodan looked to me like he had it in him. 
These two Morris Park races had been captured, one, 
two, three by good ones, and I could see when I had a 
chance to look Jodan over in his stall that he was short 
of work. The string to which the horse belonged had 
a poor trainer, and I knew that a good trainer could get 
some six furlong races out of Jodan. I had a hunch on 
Jodan, and I fixed it in my head that if ever the horse 
got into the hands of a good trainer and was brought 
around right for the six-furlong distance, he’d get a 
piece of my money, no matter what company he was up 
against. 

“ Well, along toward the close of the St. Asaph meet- 
ing Jodan turned up at the track with another trainer 
handling him — a man who had as good a knack of con- 
ditioning horses as ever I met up with, and an old chum 
of mine. I rubbed up with him before he had been on 
the track fifteen minutes, and asked him what he was 
going to do with Jodan. 

“ ‘ I am going to try him out in the first three-quarter 
event I can squeeze him into/ he told me , ‘ and I wouldn’t 
be surprised to see him get a piece of it. His right fore- 
leg is a bit bum, but if it holds together I don’t see 
why the fellows I know shouldn’t get a bite off a real 
good thing in Jodan. He’s got a turn of speed, and I’ve 
got him dead right. The only thing that worries me is 
that swollen knee, and I’m doing my best at patching 
that up.’ 

“ I told him of the hunch I’d had at Morris Park on 


46 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Jodan, and he told me to stay with it, and he'd attend 
to his end of it to help me out. 

“ 4 There’ll be all kinds of a price on him when I send 
him to the pump,’ he said, ‘ and I’ll let you know in time 
just how he is.’ 

“ Well, that hunch just grew and grew on me. The 
Washington chaps that I had met and pushed along with 
the good things that I didn’t have the sap to play myself 
heard from me on the Jodan question. I told them 
that I had him up my sleeve and to stand by. They had 
never heard of the horse and they almost side-stepped 
when I told ’em he was as good as any of them over a 
three-quarter route— that he had never been got right. 
There were a lot of six-furlongers down at St. Asaph 
then that could negotiate the distance in .15 flat, and 
they couldn’t see where a horse that they had never heard 
of had a look-in with that kind. I held my ground, how- 
ever, and they said that when it was to come off they’d 
throw a little bit of a bet at the bird, just because I 
said so. 

“ A couple of days later Jodan’s name showed up 
among the entries for a six-furlong sprint, and I had an- 
other chaw with his trainer. 

“ ‘ He’s good,’ he told me. ‘ Stay with your hunch. 
He ought to do.’ 

“ The race was to be run on a Saturday. I looked up 
my Washington friends and told them confidently what 
Jodan was going to do with a bunch of the best three- 
quarter runners in training. Four or five of them couldn’t 
help but give me the hoot on the proposition, and they 
said they weren’t going over to the track, anyhow— too 
busy closing up the week’s business, and so on. They 
couldn’t see where Jodan figured with the lot he was to 
meet. I went around to the rest of these Washington 


TAKING CHANCES. 


47 


fellows on the Friday evening before the race and told 
them again about Jodan. They, too, were all going to 
be too busy with the Saturday wind-up of business to 
take in the races that day, but five of them gave me $10 
each to put on Jodan for them. None of them had 
any confidence in the thing, though. 

“ The Jodan race was the first on the card. There 
were fourteen entries, and not a horse was scratched. 
The track was deep in dust, and I knew then Jodan liked 
that sort of going. It looked like a cinch. I knew that 
the bookies would be dead to Jodan, but I didn’t think 
they’d take the liberties they did with him. The favorite 
opened up at 2 to i, and he was played down to 6 to 5 
in no time. Then there were four or five shots in it rang- 
ing from 3 to 1 to 15 to 1, when the rank outsiders were 
written in all the way up to 150 to 1. Jodan, my mutt, 
stowed away for a good thing, opened up at 100 to 1 
and stuck there. I went out to the stable where Jodan 
was quartered to find his trainer, but I couldn’t dig 
him up. He was mixed up with the bunch in the pad- 
dock or in the stand. So I decided that it wasn’t neces- 
sary for me to see him, anyhow, before putting my 
money on Jodan. I had seen him the night before, when 
he whispered to me that Jodan was gorgeous, and that 
he was going to play him to win, no matter if the books 
laid 1000 to 1 against the horse. 

“ So I traipsed around to the ring to put down my 
money and that of my friends on Jodan. As I say, 
Jodan’s price all over the ring was 100 to 1, and no 
takers. I had the five tens the Washington chaps had 
given me and the last fifty spot I had on earth in my 
mitt, ready to shoot around and plant it in $10 gobs on 
Jordan before the price could be rubbed, thus standing 
to win $5000 for myself and and $5000 for the Washing- 


48 


TAKING CHANCES. 


ton fellows, with my share out of their winnings for putting 
them next. I was the very next man in line to plant my 
first ten with one of the books, when I felt a hard pinch 
on my right arm, and I wheeled around suddenly to 
swat the duck that had given it to me. It was my friend, 
the trainer of Jodan. He nodded me over to the little va- 
cant space. 

“ ‘ You were just going to take some Jodan, weren’t 
you ? ’ he asked me. 

“ ‘ That’s what,’ said I. ‘ He’ll turn the trick, won’t 
he?’ 

“ ‘ No,’ he replied shortly. ‘ I’ve been trying to find 
you for the last hour to tell you. The mutt’s got another 
twist during the night somehow or another, and now 
it’s about twice its right size. Stay off. He can’t do 
it. He’s not limping much, but I can’t see how he’ll go 
a quarter with such a leg. It’ll be a miracle if that hard- 
luck skate finishes at all.’ 

“ This was a hard fall for me, I’m telling you that. I 
had been building on it for one of my cinch hunch things, 
and to hear that it had gone rank took the nerve out of 
me. Of course, in a dismal kind of way, I was glad my 
friend the trainer had put me next to the state of things 
in time to keep me off the dead one for my whole fifty 
and the fifty of my friends in Washington, but that 
wasn’t much salve for the hurt I got when he told me 
that Jodan couldn’t possibly do it. With Jodan out of it 
I felt certain that the 6 to 5 favorite would come in all 
alone, and so I put the whole bundle down that way 
$120 to $100. It made me glum to think of the difference 
between that and $10,000 to $100. 

“ Then I went up to the stand to see the lot file past 
on their way to the post. My horse, the favorite, was 
just a-prancing and looked to me like a 1 to 10 thing 


TAKING CHANCES. 


49 


with Jodan out. But my trainer chum had put me on 
right. Jodan’s knee was as big as your hat, and he had 
his limp along with him. One of the stewards noticed 
this and made a bit of talk about not allowing Jodan to 
race, but when he was told that Jodan always went to 
the post with a bum knee, even after his warming up, 
he closed up and Jodan went around to the pump with 
his field. 

“ They got off the first break. The people in the stand 
were down on the favorite almost to a man, and the yelp 
they let out when he shot to the lead from the first jump 
was a heap noisy. My poor old Jodan plug was almost 
left at the post, but his boy got him going all right, and 
I was rather surprised to see him quickly join the rear 
bunch. By this time, at the half, the favorite was just 
buck-jumping five lengths out in front of the first divis- 
ion. Then the hind ones began to move up, and I stood 
by to see Jodan get shuffled out of it. But he didn't 
shuffle. He passed right by the rear gang and nearing 
the three-quarters he was at the saddle-girths of the front 
division and going like a cup defender in half a gale. 

“ ‘ You’ll chuck that in a minute, my boy,’ I thought, 
with my mind on Jodan. ‘ Three-legged races look all 
right on paper, but they don’t go through.’ 

“ I lost the colors when they turned into the stretch, 
but I saw that the favorite was still a good two lengths 
in front. The track was so deep in dust that I couldn’t 
make out the others until they were well into the stretch 
for the lope to the wire. Then when they were all set- 
tled down to their barrels in the flying yellow dust, I saw 
one of the front divisionites behind the leader shoot out 
around on the outside and bend down to it. Say, I closed 
my lamps down tight. That horse coming on the out- 
side like a black devil, with his bit almost crunched into 


TAKING CHANCES. 


50 

flinders, was Jodan. I opened up my eyes when they were 
about sixty yards from the wire. In the middle of the 
whirlwind of dust I saw the favorite faltering, with 
Jodan a neck away and going like as if his distance was 
only a quarter of a mile and he a-covering it there in the 
•stretch. Then I pulled my glasses away from my head, 
sat down, shut my eyes again and shook hands with death 
for a few seconds while the Indians all around me were 
howling ‘ Jodan ! , 4 Jodan ! ’ 

“ ‘ Jodan wins ! ’ they yelled when the horses got under 
the wire, and I opened up my eyes just in time to see 
Jodan with open daylight between him and the favorite. 
That was a three-legged miracle, all right. I was in a 
daze, but I had a picture in my head of five fellows in 
Washington that had treated me right waiting for the 
race train to get in so that I could hand them each a 
thousand. I couldn’t stand for that, and I had too many 
different kinds of heartbreak warping me out under my 
vest to feel like trying to explain the thing to them, 
So I walked over to Alexandria and caught the after- 
noon train for Richmond, after leaving my bum string in 
the hands of another trainer. From Richmond I went 
on down to New Orleans, where I had some luck — never 
enough luck, though, to square the game up with me 
for that win of Jodan’s, which made me feel old and 
tired for a long time afterward. 

“ If I outlive those five Washington fellows, or they 
take it into their lids to go to the Klondike together, maybe 
I’ll have another look around under the shadow of that 
big dome yonder. But I don’t want to meet them. Ex- 
plaining’s too hard work, and the circumstances of that 
St. Asaph happening, which occurred as I’ve spieled it, 
were ‘ agin ’ me!” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


SI 


STORY OF AN “ ALMOST ” COMBINATION. 


It Paid $ 2,000 to $2, and Looked Like a Winner Until the 
Last Jump , But 


There was a period of prolonged, nerve-racking ex- 
citement one afternoon last week in a demure and retiring 
Harlem poolroom that doesn’t draw any color line. A 
colored sport was threatening to tear the place loose from 
its foundations and to fire a volley over the ruins — in a 
purely figurative sense, that is to say. Literally he didn’t 
commit any breach of the peace at all. But he had a com- 
bination ticket in his clothes for a couple of hours that 
practically made all the rest of the people in the place for- 
get what they were there for. He was as black as that 
overworked one-spot of spades. He was known to his 
envied intimates only as Mose, and the very large checked 
suit of plaid that he wore had a certain cake-walk sug- 
gestiveness, as did his huge red necktie, his patent leathers 
with blue polka-dotted uppers, and his three large yellow 
diamonds, two of them on his fingers and the other 
screwed in the middle of his shirt bosom which showed 
horizontal bars. He was a sport all right. 

He entered the poolroom alone, looked up at the board, 
and then dug a bit of paper, obviously a telegram, out of 
his Oxford cloth Newmarket overcoat. A man who was 
rude enough to look over his shoulders saw that the tele- 
gram was a night message and that it bore the New Or- 
leans date. It contained the names of five horses, with the 
initials of the sender. 

“ He’s a po’tuh on uh Pullman,” vouchsafed the sport 


52 


TAKING CHANCES. 


to the privileged character who had looked over his shoul- 
der at the despatch. “ An’ he’s uh babe, yo’ heah me ! He 
knows ’em lak he knows uh blackin’ brush. Ah’s uh 
gwine tuh mek uh combinashun on de hull five. De ticket 
’ll win in uh walk.” 

After sizing up the house betting on the New Orleans 
races for a few minutes, he walked up to the counter 
where the combination tickets exuded from the lightning 
calculator. Just at that moment there was nothing doing 
at the combination counter. The sport produced his tele- 
gram, cleared his throat, and began. 

“ Ah’s got de hull five babies,” he said with a grin to the 
ticket writer. “ An’ ah’s uh gwine tuh tek ’em all tuh win. 
Doan’ want none o’ ’em fo’ place or show. Dey’s all got 
tuh come in all alone.” 

“ Shoot ’em out,” said the ticket writer. 

The sport named the five horses that he knew were 
going to win the New Orleans races. They were, in the 
order of the races, Mint Sauce, Russell R., Deyo, Benne- 
ville and Donna Rita. 

The ticket writer executed his bit of lightning head 
work, with frequent glances at the board to get the prices 
on the runners, and then he looked up at the sport with a 
grin. 

“ Huntin’ for a hog killin’, ain’t you ? ” he asked. 
“ Goin’ to put us out o’ business ? It figures a thousand to 
one. How much do you want on it ? ” 

“ Two dolluhs,” replied the sport and he passed up the 
money. The ticket writer pencilled the names of the horses 
down on the ticket, placed the figures “ $2,000 to $2 ” at 
the bottom of it, and handed the bit of pasteboard to the 
sport with the remark : 

“ You’re a good thing. Come again.” 

“ Yo’ all kin do yo’ hollern’ w’en de hosses run,” was 


TAKING CHANCES. 


53 


the sport’s good-natured reply, and then he went to the 
extreme outer row of seats in the pool room and sat down 
to wait for $2,000 to accrue to him on an investment of 
$2. 

Along toward 3 o’clock the betting came in on the first 
race at New Orleans. The horse Mint Sauce that the 
sport had in his combination ticket was the odds-on fa- 
vorite, although he had been at a good price in the house 
betting. The queer crowd of players surged up to the 
counters to put their money down on things they liked, 
that figured all right in the dope books ; but the sport kept 
his seat. His speculation for the day was over. He was 
simply waiting for his $2 to grow to $2,002. 

Then they were off at New Orleans, as the telegrapher 
announced with a bored air, electrifying the crowd into 
silence. It was a six-furlong race, and there was nothing 
to it but Mint Sauce all the way. At the three-quarters, 
when the telegrapher announced that Mint Sauce was 
third and just galloping, the sport leaned back in his seat 
with an it’s-all-over expression, snapped his fingers a 
couple of times for luck, and said : 

“ It’s uh cake-walk fo’ dat baby. Ah’m on right so far/’ 

“ Mint Sauce wins by two lengths,” announced the op- 
erator, and the announcement was received with silence. 
Poolroom crowds don’t play favorites as a rule. 

“ Mah nex’ is this heah Russell R.,” said the sport, 
gazing at his ticket again, “ an’ Russell R. he’s dun got 
tuh win. Ah feels uh leetle squeenchy uhbout he all, but 
Russell R. he’ll buck- jump in.” 

The betting came in on the race a few moments later, 
and Russell R. was at a long price. Several horses in the 
race were at much shorter prices. The sport didn’t look 
worried a little bit over this. 


54 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Russell R. he’s dun got tuh win,” he said, and that 
was all there was about it. 

“ Off at New Orleans,” announced the weary looking 
operator again, and then he began to call off the way the 
race was being run. It looked bad for the sport’s ticket 
until the telegrapher had carried the nags along to the 
three-quarter post and then Russell R., who hadn’t been 
anywhere, got his first call, joining the bunch as third, at 
that stage of the journey. 

“Sadie Burnham in the stretch by a length!” an-, 
nounced the telegrapher. “ Lomond second by a length, 
Russell R. third,” and then the sport began to root for 
his horse. He swayed back and forth in his wicker rock- 
ing chair, moaning, “ Come, yo’ Russell hoss ! Yo’ heah 
me uh-talkin’, hoss — come, yo’ Russell — or yo’ doan’ git 
no oats — ketch him, yo’ baby, an’ yo’ pa’ll treat yo’ 
right ” 

“ Russell R. wins, by a head ! ” announced the tele- 
grapher. 

“ Oh, yo’ wahm thing, yo’ Russell ! ” suppressedly ex- 
claimed the sport, his finger-snapping suddenly stopping 
and an upturned crescent grin spreading over the whole 
area of his chocolate countenance. 

It seemed that some of the less important sports must 
have been “ riding ” Russell R. too, for their exultant 
“ Uh-huhs ! ” rang around the room. The colored sport 
dearly loves a long shot. 

“ De nex’ on mah piece o’ pas’e-boa’d,” said the sport, 
ransacking through his pockets again for his ticket, “ is 
dain’jus. Ah doan’ lak dis heah hoss Deyo, but Ah ain’t 
uh-playin’ whut Ah laks, but whut’s dun sent tuh me. So 
Deyo she’s dun got tuh win, too.” 

It was after 4 o’clock by this time, and the poolroom 
was filling up with young fellows turned loose from the 


Taking chances. 


55 


down-town offices. Many of these late arrivals had 
straight tips in the form of telegrams on the third race at 
New Orleans and they almost overwhelmed the ticket 
writers. When the betting came in on that race Deyo was 
at a long price, much longer than the house betting had 
quoted the nag, and the sport looked a bit anxious over 
this. His worried look disappeared, however, when the 
second line of betting came in, showing that Deyo was 
being backed down some on the New Orleans track. 

“ Dey’s sumthin’ uh-doin’ on that mule,” he said, and 
the telegrapher began to call off the race. It was some- 
thing easy for Deyo, who beat the favorite by three 
lengths. The sport didn’t have to snap his fingers or sway 
in his chair at all. Deyo was in front all the way. Three- 
fifths of the $2,000 to $2 ticket was won. 

By this time the sport was the cynosure of a good many 
pairs of eyes. The possibilities of the ticket he had in his 
pocket were whispered about, and a number of the real 
things in the sport line edged over and asked to have a 
look at the ticket. 

“ It’s a alimpey-boolera,” they said, and they rubbed the 
back of it for luck. Then a lot of them went up to the 
combination desk and got combination tickets for the re- 
maining two horses that appeared on the colored sport’s 
ticket. By the time the betting came in on the fourth race 
it was known all over the room that the sport had a $2,000 
to $2 ticket with three of the horses already over the plate. 
The sport enjoyed it all with becoming modesty. 

“ Dis heah hoss, Benneville, will now step out an’ run 
seben fuhlongs fo’ me,” he said, referring to his ticket 
again. “ Ah doan’ know mahse’f jes’ how good dis heah 
Benneville is jes’ now, but dis is his day tuh win by uh 
block.” 

Benneville came in an odds-on favorite, and won by 


TAKING CHANCES. 


56 

three open lengths. The sport again was relieved of the 
necessity of rooting. 

“Ah’n dun rode dat one mahse’f,” he said grinning, 
and he found himself in the middle of a crowd of sports 
of his own color. 

“ Look uh-heah, nigguh, doan’ yo’ all remembuh me ? ” 
a lot of them inquired of him as they crowded around him. 

“ Remembuh nothin’/’ said he impartially. “ Ah doan’ 
mek it mah bizness tuh remembuh nobody.” 

“ Hey, what does your ticket call for in the next? ” was 
a question that fifty men threw at him as he sat in state 
in his wicker rocker. 

“ De nex’ skate on de list,” he replied, spelling out the 
letters on his ticket, which was being rubbed a good deal 
for luck by all hands within rubbing distance, “ is de 
maiuh Donna Rita. Ah wouldn’t give $2 fo’ Donna Rita 
mahse’f, de way she’s bin un-runnin’, but Donna Rita’s 
dun got tuh walk in all by huhse’f dis time,” whereupon 
he returned the ticket to his pocket as if it already repre- 
sented $2,002. 

The sport had got down Donna Rita into his combina- 
tion at a long price in the house betting. When the first 
line of betting came in from New Orleans, however, 
Donna Rita was seen to be the favorite for the race, with 
a big field to beat. 

“ Donna Rita’s lak gettin’ money in uh lettuh,” said the 
sport, and every man in the room that heard these words 
of wisdom from the lips of the man with the magical com- 
bination ticket in his pocket, played Donna Rita to win. 
So here was the sport, enthroned like any monarch of Da- 
homey, with the crowd surging around him. One of the 
white sports, waving a roll as big as his fist, elbowed his 
way through the crowd surrounding the colored sport 
and flatly offered him $500 for his ticket, after looking at 


TAKING CHANCES. 


57 


it and seeing that Donna Rita, much the best horse in the 
next race, had her name inscribed there. It was a tempta- 
tion, but the sport was game, and stood pat. 

“ Dis heah ticket ain’t fo’ sale,” he said. “ De two 
thousands good enough fo’ this coon.” 

Another man offered him $800 for his $2 ticket. The 
offer was declined. There wasn’t a man in the crowd that 
wasn’t rooting for the sport’s ticket to wind up all right, 
and to make their rooting more effective they played 
Donna Rita to win the last race almost to a man. The 
less important sports were keeping close to their brother 
in hue. They wanted to be in at the finish — perhaps to 
help the sport to celebrate. At post time there was hardly 
a man at the betting counters. They were all hovering 
near the sport for luck. 

“ Off at New Orleans! ” shouted the telegrapher, who 
knew about the sport’s ticket by this time, and there was 
a note of unusual excitement in his voice as he called off 
the race. “ Donna Rita in the lead ! ” 

“ Oh, yo’ babe, Donna ! ” shouted all the sports in 
unison, and “ stay right theah, yo’ nigguh ! ” shouted the 
one particular sport. 

“ Donna Rita at the quarter by five lengths ! ” called out 
the telegrapher, and the poolroom might have been taken 
for an Emancipation Day festival. “ Donna Rita at the 
half by five lengths ! ” 

“ Ef yo’ lubs yo’ man, come uhlong ! ” moaned the sport 
in ecstasy. 

“ Donna Rita at the three-quarters by three lengths, 
Kisme second, Virgie O. third,” droaned the operator. 
“ Donna Rita in the stretch by a head ! ” 

The sport rocked to and fro and groaned. 

“ Virgie O. wins by a nose ! ” announced the tele- 
grapher. 


58 


TAKING CHANCES. 


That settled the combination. The sport's followers fell 
away from him like autumn leaves from wind-tortured 
trees. 

“ They ain’t nothin’ in this horse-racin’ game is they ? ” 
the frequenters of the poolroom said to one another as 
they slouched out, and the grating tones of the cashiers 
counting bills soon echoed through the deserted room. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


59 


“RED” DONNELLY’S STREAK OF LUCK. 


He “Runs a Shoestring into a Tannery ’’ and Then Gets 
the Cold Shoulder from the Lady Fortune . 

A party of turfmen in Washington for the Benning 
meeting were talking the other evening of the remarkable 
streak of luck which has enabled Billy Barrick to run a 
borrowed shoestring of $200 up to an amount which is 
now said to approximate $100,000 in the last six weeks. 

“ Barrick’s double-ended luck, both at faro bank and 
horses,” said one of the bookmakers in the party, “ is a 
whole lot out of the common. Luck is a full-bred sort of 
an affair, and it does not often run along hybrid lines. 
What I mean to say is that the man who has a huge run 
of luck at one game almost invariably falls into the dol- 
drums and goes all to pieces when he switches to another 
game. The luckiest men I ever knew on the turf, for ex- 
ample, were the unluckiest card players, and most of them 
stubbornly spent a good many thousands of their pony 
winnings before they found this out. Barrick seems to 
be an exception. He has got into the current, and he could 
probably get away with the money at fan-tan or Cinga- 
lese pool while he’s in his present shape. I’m a bit afraid 
of him just now myself, and when I see his commissioners 
bearing down on my book I’m sorely tempted to rub the 
whole slate until I get a chance to rubberneck and find 
out what they’re after. If I were dealing faro bank, so 
weird has his luck at tiger-bucking been lately, too, that 
I believe I’d make it a thirty-cent limit when I saw him 
coming. But he’s an exception, as I say. It's the man who 


6o 


TAKING CHANCES. 


sticks to the one game that drives the swaggerest dog- 
cart and wears the whitest gig-lamps in the long run. 

“ I remember a chap out in St. Louis who ran a shoe- 
string of five cents up to pretty close to six figures in the 
summer of 1895. He bucked more games in doing it, too, 
than Barrick has thus far, but he couldn’t go a route, and 
they ate him up when the whisky got into his head in 
such quantities that he saw treble without having a focus 
on anything. His name was Red Donnelly, and he had 
charge of the bookmakers’ paraphernalia in the betting 
ring of the St. Louis fair grounds when the Lady Fortune 
beamed upon that nickel of his and invited him to bask for 
a time in her domain. He was a loose-jointed spraddle- 
shaped sort of a young chap of 25 or so who had been 
hanging around the St. Louis tracks from his early boy- 
hood. He learned so much about the horses that he could 
never win anything on them when he played in the ten- 
cent books made by the rail-birds. He handicapped them 
down to the sixteenth of a pound, and the horse that he 
put his dime on consequently got beaten, as a rule, by a 
tongue. He had been holding down the job of a dog-rob- 
ber for the bookmakers for two seasons before he struck 
his lead on that nickel. He came out to the track one day, 
early in June, 1895, with the solitary nickel reposing in the 
depths of his trousers’ pockets, salted there to pay his fare 
back to the city. He got to pulling the five-cent piece out 
of his clothes and looking at it longingly by the time the 
first race was due. He wanted to get down on a race, but 
there were no five-cent books. The bottom sum accepted 
by the rail-bird books was a dime. Red strolled out to 
the barns and got to pitching nickels with a pack of idle 
stable boys. The luck was with him from the jump, and 
when he accumulated a dollar in nickels he exhibited 
symptoms of a man suffering from chilblains. His reason 


TAKING CHANCES. 


61 


for getting cold feet was that he had a good thing in the 
fourth race, and by the time he had acquired the dollar 
the betting had begun on the fourth race. 

“ Red hurtled himself into the ring with his dollar and 
saw that the price offered against his good thing, the old 
nag Hush, was 60 to i. Donnelly needed a bundle of 
cigarettes and a few drinks pretty badly, but he was 
game when it came to sticking to his good things, and 
he slapped his twenty nickels down on Hush with a book- 
maker he knew. He took good-naturedly the mocking 
hoot which the booky gave him for handing in twenty 
pieces of that kind of metal, and catapulted himself out 
to the rail just as the horses went away from the post. 
The race was really something silly for Hush, in the un- 
wieldy field of nineteen horses. Hush led all the way, and 
pranced under the wire first in a big gallop, pulled double. 
The boy had Hush up in his lap all the way. 

Red had some difficulty in collecting his $61. The book- 
maker knew him well, knew of his taste for rum, and 
knew also that few of Red’s rare dollars ever found their 
way to the humble shack of the man’s infirm old Irish 
mother. 

“ ‘ I believe I’ll just pinch this out on you, Red,’ said 
the booky to him, ‘ and pass it along to the old lady when 
I go in to-night. It won’t do you any good.’ 

“ ‘ Come to taw,’ replied Red. * I want to put thirty or 
forty cents down on the next race. I got another good 
thing in it.’ 

“ The bookmaker reluctantly passed Donnelly the $61. 
Red carefully folded the dollar bill and tucked it into his 
waistcoat pocket. Then he invested the $60, in $10 clips, 
with six books, on Dorah Wood, in the next race, at 15 to 
1. It was a canter for Dorah Wood, and Red knocked 
the bookmakers silly — they all knew him well from his 


62 


TAKING CHANCES. 


working around the place — by socking it to six of them 
for $150 each. A committee of safety was immediately 
formed around Donnelly, but he couldn’t be held down. 
He tossed a quart of wine under his waist-line, pur- 
chased a package of cigarettes made in Turkey for forty 
cents, and looked over his dope-book carefully. Then he 
strolled into the ring and bet $900 on Minnie Cee in the 
last race. Minnie Cee was at 3 to 1, and it was something 
ridiculous for her. She won on the bit, and Red was 
$3,660 to the good on that nickel that he had salted away 
in his homespuns for the return trip to town. 

“ When Red turned up to collect, Barney Schreiber — 
he’s a big-hearted Barney — had him, as it were, by the 
scruff of the neck. Barney announced to all of us that 
he was going to collect for Donnelly, and what Barney 
said went with us, for we all knew Red’s propensities. 
Donnelly put up a weak growl, but he knew ’way down 
deep in him that Schreiber could and would take care 
of the cash better than he could or would. Barney 
pinched $3,500 of the wad, inserted it in a separate com- 
partment of his wallet, and handed Red $150. 

“ ‘ I’ll just let you have a little change, Red, said he, 
* and if you think you can run that up into a tanyard, go 
ahead. But I’m a-going to handle this for you the right 
way. You’re not tied enough in your ways to have 
such a vast sum on your person all at one and the same 
time/ 

“ Donnelly didn’t demur much. The $150 was a huge 
sum itself for him, and he, of course, knew that Schreiber 
would do the right thing with the main bunch. As a 
matter of fact, Barney deposited the $3500 the next day 
to the credit of Donnelly’s old mother, and Schreiber 
and the old woman were the only people who knew any- 
thing about that end of it for a long time afterward. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


63 


“ We all gibed and roasted Red about the delirium- 
tremens finish we foresaw for him, and when he didn’t 
turn up at the track at all on the following day, neces- 
sitating the turning of his dog-robbing work over to 
another man, there was a lot of talk about the tremen- 
dous barrel-house toot Red must have gone on down the 
levee way. That’s where we were camping out. When 
we picked up the papers on turning out the following 
morning we found a scare-head story in one of them 
relating in great detail and elaborate diction how one Mr. 
John S. Donnelly, a gentleman well known on the West- 
ern turf, had swatted Ed McGuckin’s faro bank, over in 
East St. Louis, to the tune of $16,000, playing steadily 
without meals from 7 o’clock on the evening of Mon- 
day until 11 o’clock on Wednesday night, when Ed 
turned the box on him and announced that it was all off 
for the present. We all shouted ‘ fake ! ’ when we saw 
that, but a couple of us hopped into a cab and crossed 
over to McGuckin’s place to see if there was anything 
in the yarn. Well, there was everything in it. We found 
Ed holding his fevered brow and mumbling deep, dark 
things about damned vagabonds slipping into his layout 
and running shoe tongues up into leather factories. We 
expressed our sympathies with Ed, for which we came 
perilously near being kicked, and then we went back to 
St. Louis to hunt up Red. We went over the barrel- 
house route with a fine-tooth comb, but no Donnelly. 
Then we decided to drive out to his mother’s little old 
shack. Our route from the levee out there took us 
through the down-town district, and we both saw Red 
on the street at once. We drew up alongside the curb, 
and called him. He was cold sober, and he had $16,210 
in bills in his inside waistcoat pocket. We asked him 
where he was going, and he nodded in the direction of 


6 4 


TAKING CHANCES. 


the swellest tailoring establishment in St. Louis. We 
went along with him, and it was one lovely sight to ob- 
serve the fabrics Red picked out wherewith to ornament 
his long, lithe person. He ordered a dozen suits, and 
then we went with him to the haberdasher’s. He was 
all for green and yellow neckties, pink-striped shirts, 
and that sort, and we let him have his way. Then he be- 
came sleepy. We threw it into him pretty hard about that 
big bundle of money he had on him, and he finally con- 
sented to come along to a bank with us and deposit 
$14,000 of it in his name. We tried to hold out for hav- 
ing it put in his mother’s name, but he wouldn’t stand 
for that. After leaving the bank Red’s eagle eye caught 
sight of the shiny things in a jeweler’s window, and he 
decided then and there that he couldn’t go to sleep with- 
out having the third finger of his left hand made con- 
spicuous by a three-karat blue-white stone, for which he 
coughed $500. That left him with about $1500 in his 
clothes, and we dragged him then into the cab and drove 
out to his mother’s little old shanty. The old lady had her 
little talk with Barney Schreiber about the $3500 by that 
time, and the to-do she made over her ‘ bye Johnnie ’ was 
worth the ride to see. When we told her about the other 
bunch that Red had copped and that we had plunked it 
into the bank for him, the quantities of corned beef and 
cabbage which she threw into the pot for the dinner 
which she wanted us to remain to share with her and her 
phenomenal son were amazing. 

“ Well, Donnelly astonished us all for a couple of 
weeks by his extraordinary conduct. He would ride 
out to the track in a hack, with a gilt-stamped cigarette 
in his face, attend to his job as usual around the betting- 
ring— that is, he’d supervise, for he quickly accumulated 
a staff of worshiping touts and hangers-on — and then 


TAKING CHANCES. 


65 


he’d go up into the grand-stand to exhibit his cake-walk 
clothes and look at the races. He didn’t put a bet down 
on a horse for two weeks. He remained pretty sober 
all the time, too. We joshed him about the frigid pedals 
he had suddenly got, but he only passed along with the 
remark: 'I’m letting ’em run for O’Flaherty. Nothin’ 
doin’.’ 

“We waited for the crash, but it didn’t seem to come 
on schedule time. One afternoon he called me aside and 
showed me his bank-book. It showed an additional de- 
posit of $5000, making the total $19,000. 

“ ‘ When did you pick up that new roll ? ’ I asked 
him. 

“ ‘ Went up against the wheel at Terhune’s last night, 
and yanked it out in three hours,’ he said. 

“ ‘ When did you learn to play roulette ? ’ I asked 
him. 

“ ‘ Last night,’ he replied. 

“ Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up 
at the track one afternoon with a light in his eye. He 
went out into the paddock and spent three-quarters of 
an hour looking at a horse and by that time the third race 
was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000 
around on Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year- 
old race, but Madeira romped in two lengths to the 
good. That night Red, still moderately sober and 
level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We 
began to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly’s 
game and to consider the possibility of his becoming a 
real fixture. A lot of owners with bum skates tried to 
work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only 
passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an 
additional line of thinks with regard to what we thought 
was his increasing shrewdness, Besides, you see, Red 


66 


TAKING CHANCES. 


began to be right good to us. He told us all very so- 
berly one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that 
he didn’t want to hurt his own ring, so he’d send his 
money to the out-of-town poolrooms. The good thing 
was David, who won the last race in a walk at 15 to 1, 
and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that. 

“ Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people 
got at Donnelly and tried to induce him to either invest 
a part of his money — he had almost $50,000 then — in a 
string of useful horses, to be put into the hands of a com- 
petent trainer — or to have the whole bundle properly in- 
vested in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby, 
when Red’s streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn’t have 
to go back to buying cigarettes by the cent’s worth. The 
man was too bull-headed, though, to listen to anything 
like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine 
house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff 
black silk dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore 
in which to go to mass. 

“ Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of 
games around town every night, and it honestly ap- 
peared as if he couldn’t lose. Craps, stud poker, draw, 
wheel, red and black, mustang, bank — all seemed to be 
right in Donnelly’s mitt. A lot of us used to turn up 
where he was bucking things every night, and, following 
his play, we always got the good end of it. He didn’t 
know much about any of the games, and the idiotic 
things we had often to do in order to consistently fol- 
low his play made us gag, but nine times out of ten 
them came out right. One man in our party, a book- 
maker, who determined to copper all of Red’s play at 
the different games, on the theory that Donnelly’s luck 
had to turn some time or another, almost went broke be- 
fore he came into the fold and quit coppering. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


67 

All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling 
at the red stuff. By the time his great luck was a month 
old, however, the booze had nailed him, and he got to 
throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man 
can’t drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or 
judgment. Red came into the ring palpably drunk one 
afternoon and spread around $20,000 on Strathmeath 
at even money. None of us wanted to take the 
money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that 
horse was Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and 
a bit ugly, and we accommodated him. Strathmeath ran 
third, beaten out 'by two dogs. That night Don- 
nelly dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn’t 
go to bed for five nights, and at the end of that 
time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck drop 
away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly. 
For instance, he was whacking at a bank one night, 
stupefied with hooters of half rye and half absinthe, and 
he shut one eye so he wouldn’t see double and fixed it 
on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a 
clip, and lost it twelve straight times. The frowns of the 
Lady Fortune got his nerve, and he began to play favorites 
at the track. The favorites went down to inglorious 
defeat, one after another, for days. 

“ Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber, 
got hold of Red when he had only the $6000 left, landed 
him in a fix-up ward, and sobered him up. When he 
came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in an ex- 
press business. I don’t believe he ever saw the inside 
of the express office more than half dozen times, except 
to draw what was coming to him. He was at the track 
all the time the races lasted, and when the season closed 
he put in his time down on the levee. He never had a 
day’s luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his 


68 


TAKING CHANCES. 


death, somewhat less than a year after they came his way 
with a whoop and a rush. 

“ When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to 
stroke her hair, chuck her under the chin and be good 
to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice to a man who 
treats her favors wantonly.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


69 


AND “RED BEAK JIM ” TOOK THE TIP. 

Plunge Made by a Hackman on the Suburban Handicap 
Won by Kinley Mack. 


“ We’ll get Red Beak Jim to hike us down in his ca- 
loosh,” said the main guy of the four. The four were job 
holders in one of the New York city departments, and 
they were talking about ways and means of reaching the 
Sheepshead track for the Suburban. 

“ Good thing,” said the three others. “ Go on and ask 
Jimmy for a figure, down and back, for the bunch. Hey, 
and don’t let him dicker you out o’ your gilt teeth. Jim- 
my’s a robber.” 

So the main guy of the four sprinted after Red Beak 
Jim. He found him with the major portion of his counte- 
nance immersed in the collarette of an open-faced malt 
magnum. 

“ Hey, Jim,” said the main guy, “ hitch ’em up and 
bring ’em around about noon. Down to the Bay and back. 
There’s four of us. What d’ye say to the note for $10 for 
the job? ” 

Red Beak Jim removed the mammoth piece of glass- 
ware from his face long enough to remark : 

“ Nothin’ doin’.” 

“ Ain’t, hey ? ” said the main guy. “ The old caloosh’s 
fallen apart at last, hey ? ” 

Red Beak Jim sat the beer-glass down and wiped off his 
mouth with the back of his coat-sleeve. 

“ It’ll be jugglin’ around when you’re yelling for ice 


70 


TAKING CHANCES. 


at any old price a hunnered," said he. “ Nope, I'm ’ngaged 
fr th' Bay." 

“ Say, you've got your fingers crossed or your suspen- 
ders," said the main guy. “ Give you fifteen for the job." 

“ Goin’ t’ take three down," said Red Beak Jim. “ Ten 
a head. Sorry I didn't ask 'em fifteen. Trucks is chargin’ 
ten a head." 

“ Ten a head," said the main guy, sarcastically. “ What 
in, zinc money? Hey, pull around, Jim, or you'll lose a 
wheel. Ten a head? Get away with that hasheesh. Give 
us a figure." 

“ You’ve got it," replied Red Beak Jim. “ Ten per, 
round trip. I'm a good thing at that. But I’m ’ngaged." 

“ So’s me little sister," said the main guy. “ All right, 
work your edge. What's ten a head to us, at that? Hey, 
we got the baby to-day, Jim, and you want to put some 
braces under that old caloosh. We’ll have two ton o' 
money coming back. Bring 'er around, then, at noon. 
Say, you ought to get a pair o’ knucks and a sandbag. 
You’re too good on the clutch to push a caloosh around. 
Have 'er there prompt at noon, now, Jim." 

“ Sure," said Red Beak Jim, and he was there at noon, 
all right, with the hack all varnished up and dusted off, 
and the pair looking fit to reel off a mile in five minutes, 
on the bit. The four were inside, stirring their pieces of 
ice around with the spoons, when Red Beak Jim pulled 
up. He jumped off the seat and stuck his head in the 
door. 

“ At the pump, gents," said he. 

They yanked him in to have one before the start, and 
they all got him over into the dark corner. Then the main 
guy addressed him. 

“ Jim," said the main guy, “ we’re handing this to you 
because you're all right — from the heels down. On the 


TAKING CHANCES. 


7 1 


level, though, Jim, we pass this along to you because it’s 
right. It’s prepared. It’s a nightingale in the woods, and 
it'll be singing when all the rest of 'em are still trying to 
find out where the wire is. Horse of the century? Nix. 
Not for these little Willies. The black, let 'er sleep won- 
der? Not. We stay out there. The Whitney thing with 
the Frenchy ’ name ? Hoot, mon. Pass this squad by. 
Nope. We got it right, Jimmy. And we're handing you 
the forty bucks now so's you can plant it right. Here’s 
the forty — and say, you want to remember that you're 
paid, see? Well, you get over the fence somehow — let a 
kid take care o’ your two goats and the caloosh — and you 
put the whole forty on Kinley Mack. See? Got that 
chalked ? You put the forty on Kinley Mack, and part o’ 
the two ton o' gilt we'll have on the come-back '11 belong to 
you. Kinley Mack's going to stand ’em all on their heads 
and twist ’em round. Don’t say we didn’t put you next. 
Uneeda win. Well, you win. Nothing to it. Kinley Mack. 
Ain’t that right, you ducks ? ” 

“ That’s right, all right,” said the other three, all to- 
gether. 

Red Beak Jim emptied the flagon thoughtfully. 

“ I got mine at that game,” said he finally. “ They 
made a bum o’ me before you people was through playin’ 
jacks. They can run f’r Hogan. “ These ” — salting away 
the two twenties the main guy had handed him — “ will do 
f’r me. I don’t want t’ git rich fast, nohow. I’d booze me- 
self foolish. Much ’bliged, gents, but I can’t see no Kinley 
Macks or Billy Bryans, f’r that matter, wit’ a spy-glass.” 

“ All right,” said the main guy, disgustedly. “ But when 
the ring’s around Kinley Mack, and they’re paying off the 
wise people on him, you want to muffle the bleats you’ll 
have coming, see? Don’t say we never dished you up a hot 
one. You’re a sport, Jimmy, and so’s a tadpole. You’ll 


72 


TAKING CHANCES. 


never butt in among the first six. All right. Come on, 
you people.” 

They clinked the pieces of ice against the sides of their 
glasses once more, and then they climbed into the hack 
and were away in a row, to a good start. 

At each of the seven places at which they stopped for 
ice, with trimmings, on the way down to the Bay, they 
announced to friends that they met that it was only going 
to be a one horse race. 

“ Run on a fast track, hey ? ” said the main guy to 
everybody he knew at the stops. “ Say, that's his graft. 
That’s his main plant. A race-horse can run on any old 
kind of a track. Say, you get tied up with this horse of 
the century business and you smoke stogies for a few 
months. Ethelbert, the horse of the century, hey? Say, 
d’je ever happen to hear of Salvator and Tenny and Han- 
over and Lamplighter and Henry of Navarre and Sir 
Walter and Raceland and Hamburg and a few old two- 
dollar mutts like that? Did, hey? Well, say, do they butt 
in? Say, Hamburg could’ve run backward as fast as this 
horse of the century that you people have all got the bug 
about. Kinley Mack ! Kinley Mack ! Hey, fellers ? ” 

“ Thash ri’,” said the other three, and then they climbed 
into the hack again. 

When they got down to the track entrance and alighted 
the main guy of the four, still mindful of his duty toward 
struggling fellow men, made a final appeal to Red Beak 
Jim. 

“Jim,” said he, “how about taking our steer, hey? 
This is the good thing o’ the year. It’s going to be a long 
summer. Going to put that forty on Kinley Mack ? ” 

“ I’m goin’ t’ take a nap after I have a smoke,” replied 
Red Beak Jim, filling his pipe. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


73 


The four walked away with an air of disgust, while 
Red Beak Jim grinned after them. 

Each of the four had a one-hundred-dollar note where- 
with to back Kinley Mack off the boards. The tempta- 
tions of the first three races, however, collared them, and 
when the slate went up for the Suburban they each had a 
fifty-dollar note wherewith to play Kinley Mack, the good 
thing. When the horses were at the post for the third 
race, the main guy, who happened to be standing close 
to the fence that separates the grand-stand crowd from 
the people in the cheap field, saw Red Beak Jim, with 
his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, lean- 
ing against the rail. He called the hackman, and Red 
Beak Jim approached the fence with a grin. 

“ Thought you’d get on, anyhow, hey? ” said the main 
guy. 

“ Naw, I jes’ crep in t’ see ’em run an’ hear th’ hard 
losers tell how it was they lost,” said Red Beak Jim. 
“ Nothin’ doin’ wit’ me.” 

“ Ain’t going to put those forty on Kinley Mack, hey ? ” 
asked the main guy. 

“ Not if I’m awake,” said Red Beak Jim, and the main 
guy walked away from the fence with an expression 
of commiseration on his face. 

The horses were still at the post for the third race 
when the main guy was approached by a horseman he 
knew. The horseman was chewing a straw. He looked 
very wise. 

“ Cashed yet on Imp ? ” the horseman asked the main 
guy. 

“Hey?” asked the latter, bending his ear. 

“ Only a canter for that one,” said the horseman, in 
a low tone, temporarily removing the straw from his 
face. “Just a little exercise gallop for the black filly.” 


74 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Say, is that right? ” inquired the main guy. “ Is she 
so good as all that to-day ? ” 

“ Surest thing you know/’ said the horseman. “ She’ll 
give ’em all a fifty-pound beating or I don’t know a hoof 
from a currycomb. I’m only spinning this along to the 
people I’ve got some use for. That’s the reason I dip it 
up for you.” 

“ But say,” whispered the main guy of the four, “ I 
got it straight as a ramrod on Kinley Mack.” 

The horseman smiled benignly. 

“ On this track ? ” said he. “ That one wouldn’t beat 
a fat man on this track. He wants slop and slush. I’m 
only telling you, that’s all. You splurge on Imp, and it’ll 
be all yours.” 

“ I always was stuck on that darned old mare, any- 
how,” mused the main guy of the four, as he walked off 
in search of the other three. “ She sure can rip the air 
when she’s ripe. Got a thunder of a notion to switch 
to her at that. That fellow ought to know. He’s been 
handling ’em long enough. Kinley Mack only a mudder, 
hey? Had kind of a hunch that way myself, but I didn’t 
want to own up. Last week, before I got this Kinley 
Mack thing, I was sure going to play Imp, and I’d feel 
like a nickel’s worth of lard if she’d go out and spread- 
eagle ’em now that I’ve got this Kinley Mack thing.” 

He stood still for a moment with his hands in his pock- 
ets, oblivious of the jostling crowd, and then he slapped 
his thigh. 

“ I’ve got the hunch — it’s Imp ! ” he muttered. 
“ Lemme find the fellers and put ’em next.” 

He found the other three. They were putty when 
the main guy told them what the horseman had said. 
They’d always liked Imp, anyhow. 

Their four fifty-dollar notes went on Imp straight, 


TAKING CHANCES. 


75 


when the slates went up. They all stood together and 
rooted for the black mare when the horses got off. When 
Kinley Mack romped in, an easy winner, they didn’t say 
anything at all. They didn’t even look at one an- 
other. They avoided one another’s gaze, thrust their 
hands deep into their pockets and studied the jockeys as 
they dismounted. When the first numbness had passed 
the main guy of the four led them to the bar and they 
drank the longest one of the day in silence. They looked 
up into their glasses as they twiddled their spoons, but 
they didn’t look at one another. 

There was $17 still left among the four — not enough 
for any sort of celebration or doings when they got back 
to town. So the main guy gathered up the $17 in silence 
and put it all on a horse at 10 to 1 in the fifth race, with 
the idea of running the shoestring into a tannery. The 
10 to 1 shot was never in the hunt at any stage of it, 
and they were all out. Silently they wended their way 
out of the gate. 

Red Beak Jim was sitting on the seat of the hack, with 
his legs crossed, smoking a pipe. He looked interested 
when the four came along. 

“ Youse people must have all kinds,” said he. 

They climbed into the hack without a word. 

“D’je play that one?” inquired Red Beak Jim, pick- 
ing up the lines. 

“ Ask me aunt,” growled the main guy. 

Red Beak Jim clucked at the horses, and they moved 
off in good style. 

The hackman pulled the horses up alongside the step 
in front of the first roadhouse. 

“ Hey, don’t get too glad all of a sudden,” growled 
the main guy to Red Beak Jim. “ Who told you to do 
that?” 


76 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Red Beak Jim disposed of the lines and stepped down 
without making any reply, while the four watched him 
gloomily. Then he grinned, hoisted up the right-hand 
front flap of his livery coat, dug into his right-hand 
trousers pocket and pulled out a wad about the size of a 
healthy cantaloupe. 

“ I’ll ask youse gents to split a couple o’ quarts on me,” 
said Red Beak Jim. “ I got 8 to I f’r me forty.” 

They gazed at him and his wad with their jaws drop- 
ping. 

“ Did you play Kinley Mack ? ” they gurgled in unison. 

“ That’s the one youse people said, ain’t it?” inquired 
Red Beak Jim. “ I t’ought I’d take a little flyer on him, 
jes’ f’r luck.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


77 


THE GAME OF RUNNING “ RINGERS.” 


And How He Got a Horseman Without Much of a Con- 
science into Hot Water. 


“ No man alive can afford to lose the friendship even 
of a yaller dog. Not even an ornery yaller dog can you 
afford to have agin 5 you at any stage of the game. The 
dog’ll get back at you one time or another, sooner or 
later, and take a mouthful or two out of you, if you 
haven’t had sense enough to keep him on your staff of 
friends.” 

The man who used to make a business of putting ring- 
ers over the plates at the outlaw race-tracks had passed 
from the reflective to the confidential mood. Perhaps the 
rings which he made on the cherry table with the bottom 
or his glass suggested circular race-tracks to him. Per- 
haps the prancing of the fox-terrier pup in the back 
room made him think of horses kicking up at the post. 
But, whatever the cause of it, his burst of confidence 
was unusual, and the other men at the table listened to 
him attentively. 

“ My yellow dog was a yellow man — that is, the one 
I’m thinking about just now,” he went on. “ He took 
a hunk out of me down at Alexander Island, Va., near 
Washington, about five years ago. He had me out. All 
he had to do was to count ten on me and take the pot, and 
he knew it. He worked the edge. I didn’t blame him a 
bit then, and I don’t now. But it was hard money to lose. 
When I get hold of the right end of a bulge on a man that 
I’ve got it in for, I don’t hesitate to work it myself — but 


78 


TAKING CHANCES. 


I always feel a bit sorry for a man that I get up into a 
corner, all the same. This yellow man felt sorry for me. 
He showed it. He was about as sympathetic a yellow 
man as ever I saw on the occasion I'm going to tell you 
about. But he wouldn’t let go, for all that. He needed 
the money, of course, but then he wanted to get back at 
me, too. 

“ ‘ I’se dun got de aige on yo’ all, boss,’ he told me, 
* an Fm sure a-gwine t’ wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But 
yo’ dun me dutty, Cap.’ 

“ You see, I had employed this yellow man as a stable 
hand when I first got my string of ringers together and 
took them out. He was all right for the first few months 
of the winter campaign, but then he began to get jagged 
on me with a heap of regularity. He got mixed up with 
that gin that they keep on hand in Maryland for the 
Afro-American trade, and it spoiled him for me. He 
was no use whatever after the gin took hold of him. I 
warned him a lot, but it did no good. I was a little bit 
afraid of the job, for he knew a good deal about my 
string, but I finally decided that I’d have to take a chance 
and fire him. I turned up at the track stable one morning 
— this wasn’t more’n a million miles from Baltimore — and 
I found my yellow man Lem sulky and ugly drunk, and 
the string chewing on their stalls. I gave him a boot 
and a hist out of the stable and told him not to come 
back. 

“ ‘ This yellow man’ll probably queer me/ I thought 
at the time, ‘but I can’t go along playing 1000 to I 
shots like him for favorites. If he peaches — well, there 
are other States besides Maryland.’ 

“ I was rather surprised that he didn’t come back when 
he got sober. But, nope, he didn’t come back at all. I 
got another stableman and during the following week, 


TAKING CHANCES. 


79 


the last of the meeting, I pulled off three good painted 
things with as good as 15 to 1 around two of ’em, with- 
out yellow Lem turning up to pester me at all. I thought 
of him a good deal. Every time I got one of my plugs 
at the post I stood by to see the yellow man walk into 
the judges’ stand and give me away. I’ll bet I lost ten 
pounds worrying about that darkey and what he might 
do during that last week in Maryland. I felt as light 
as a snowball when I got my string out of that State 
and over at the Alexander Island track, near Washington. 
When I got ’em all safe over there/ says I to myself, 
‘ This yellow ex-man o’ mine is probably back in Thomp- 
son street, with his carcass full of gin by this time. So 
Ell just cut out the worry about him.’ 

"Well, I started in at the preliminary work of pulling 
off a real swell thing at Alexander Island. It was about 
as easy to enter a horse down there as it is to go broke 
up here, and I put the best one of my lot in the overnight 
races for a week. I entered him as a half-breed from a 
Warrenton farm — a maiden six-year-old. It went 
through easy, the overnight entering did, and I began 
to lay my horse up for a price. The horse had done a 
mile in 1 .4054 and he had the whole bunch down at Alex- 
ander Island outclassed by 212 pounds. The plug had 
belonged to the best of the Western selling-plater division 
as a three- and four-year-old and he had been in a few 
stakes at that. I got him as a five-year-old and he surely 
was a meal-ticket for me. He wasn’t painted a bit — you 
didn’t have to dye ’em at Alexander Island. If Hanover 
had been an outlaw you could have stuck him into any 
old race down there and they’d never have got next. 

"I had a boy along with the string who’d been chased 
off the Western licensed tracks for funny work, and what 
that boy didn’t know about riding like as if his life de- 


8o 


TAKING CHANCES. 


pended on his winning, and forty wraps on his mount 
all the time, wasn’t worth knowing. Say he had six 
separate and distinct bridle welts on both of his forearms 
that he got in pulling horses. He was invaluable, that 
boy. When we were out to win he never made anything 
but a nose finish of it even if our horse was up against 
the worst set of outlaw dray-plugs in training. Oh, that 
boy knew his gait all right! I did the best I could to 
keep him from going to Joliet for pocketpicking in Chi- 
cago a couple o’ years ago, but it was no use. He’s still 
doing his bit. 

“ Well, I had him sail this good nag of mine over the 
course in seven races the first ten days of the meeting. 
The horse was a bit too likely looking, and there was 
only 5 to i against him in the first race. He finished 
fourth. The boys in the ring quoted 8 to i around him 
in No. 2 race, and he finished sixth in a field of seven. 
And so on. He was in the ruck in most of the races, 
and he finished the last two of the seven a rank last. 
By that time you could have written your own ticket if you 
wanted to play him, which is what I was waiting for. 
My boy complained that during the last three races he 
had all colors of trouble in holding the horse in. 

“ ‘ You’d better open the watermelon quick, said 
he to me after the seventh race, ‘ or I’m liable to lose him 
and win the next time out.’ 

“ And so I had the pie counter all spread out for his 
next time out. It was a six-furlong race, which was my 
horse’s distance. Two of the cracks of the outlaw brigade 
were in the race, and they both opened up at even money. 
Then one of ’em was played down to i to 2 on. It 
was a twelve-horse race, and my nag opened up the rank 
outsider with any amount of ioo to i quoted around him. 
I didn’t want to be too chesty and spoil my dough, and so 


TAKING CHANCES. 


81 


I only took $50 worth of it, scattering it around in $10 
gobs. I reckoned that $5000 would be a good-enough 
pulldown on the race, and I didn’t want to take any 
chances on being shut out of the game down at Alexander 
Island. I put a few of the boys I knew next to what was 
going to happen, told ’em not to go it too strong or they’d 
queer me, and they mixed up $5 all over the ring on my 
100 to 1 horse, that should have gone to the post at 1 to 
100. They broke the price down to 30 to 1, but that 
didn’t make any difference to me, for I had picked up 
all I wanted of the 100 to 1. 

“ When they went to the post I picked out a spot on 
the rail some distance away from the grand stand to watch 
the race. I felt pretty good. I knew it was going through. 
My horse had worked the six furlongs in 1:16 flat the 
afternoon before, and I knew that he was easy money. 
The only thing I was afraid of was that he would get 
away from the boy and beat the bunch by eight blocks, 
thus bringing me into the judges’ stand on suspicion. I 
was thinking of all these things when I heart a voice be- 
hind me. 

“ ‘ Aftuhnoon, Cap,’ said the voice. ‘ How’s yo’ all tuh- 
day? ’ 

I looked around. The voice belonged to Lem, my fired 
yellow stable man. Lefh was sober, and got up as if for a 
cakewalk. He had business in his eye, too. 

“ ‘ Hello, there,’ says I, kind of coddingly. 4 How’re 
you cutting it ? ’ 

“ * Oh, tol’able, boss — tol’able,’ he replied. 

“ * Where are you working? ’ I asked him. 

“ He smiled blandly in my teeth. 

“ 4 1’se a-wukkin’ yo’ all dis aftuhnoon, boss,’ said he. 

‘ But I ain’t no hog. Jes’ half o’ de rake-down’ll do rne.^ 


82 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Mus’ hev dat much, fo’ sure. Jes’ nachully need dat 
much/ 

“ 1 What the devil are you talking about ? ’ I asked him, 
but I knew he had me where he wanted me. 

“ 4 Well, yo’ see, boss, it’s jes’ dis-a-way/ he replied. 
* I’se a-gwine tuh quit rubbin’ dem down an’ take tuh 
speculashunin’ m’sef. I’se a-gwine tuh staht fo’ San Fran- 
cisco tuh see whut all I kin do with de bookies out da-a- 
way, an’ jes’ nachully needs de coin tuh go on out an’ be- 
gin wuk on ’em. Dis yeah’s uh good one yo’ all’s pullin’ 
down tuh-day, an’ I was trailin’ yo’ w’en yo’ all put yo’ 
bets down. Yo’ stan’s tuh win $5,000 on de ole hoss, an’ 
yo’ll win it. I’ll take ha’f o’ dat, boss, an’ go on out tuh 
de coast tracks with it.’ 

“ I think I must have been looking pretty hard at that 
yellow man when he slung me this spiel. Oh, he had me 
all right. It was my looking at him so hard that made 
him get off the rest of the speech : 

“ ‘ I’se dun got de aidge on yo’ all, boss, an’ I’m sure 
a-gwine tuh wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo’ dun 
me dutty, Cap.’ 

“ As I say, I knew he had me, but just out of curiosity 
I shot this one at him : 

“ ‘ S’pose, you yellow devil, that I don’t cough up a red 
of it ? What then ? ’ 

“ He grinned and rolled his eyes over toward the 
judges’ stand. 

“ ‘ I’d jes’ nachully be obleeged tuh do de bes’ I could 
fo’ de proteckshun o’ de spoht o’ racin,’ he replied. 

“ The horses were still making false breaks- at the post 
and it was too late for me to hop into the ring and lay 
enough down to win $2,500 for the yellow man and still 
have $5,000 to the good myself. It was a sore game, that, 
but I had to stand for it. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


S3 


All right/ I said to the darkey, * you’ve turned this 
trick and you’ll get the $2,500. But you want to go West 
with it, as you say you are, or I’ll get a night doctor or 
two on your trail. Chop away from here and I’ll see you 
after the race.’ 

“ ‘ I knows yo’ will boss,’ said the yellow man, giving 
me that triumphant grin of his, and he turned and went 
down the rail to take in the race. Race, did I say? Oh, it 
wasn’t a race. My horse got away from the post three 
lengths to the bad, and he trailed after the bunch dismally 
all the way around to the stretch turn, but I never had a 
quake. I could see, if nobody else could, that my boy was 
ripsawing the horse’s mouth, and I knew it was all right. 
At the stretch turn the boy let out a couple of links and the 
nag joined the front bunch. The boy drew it fine, as I 
had instructed him, and won by a short head, and it was 
funny to see the wise guys from Washington who had 
scattered all kinds of Government-earned money all over 
the ring turning mental flipflaps of despair. I watched to 
see if there’d be any holler about anything when the boy 
weighed in, but there wasn’t, and the race was confirmed 
all right. I went around and did my own collecting, and 
several of the poor devils of bookies had to go out of busi- 
ness after the rest of the boys that I had put on to the 
thing came along and cashed their tickets. I found my 
yellow man waiting for me on the outside of the ring, and 
when I got him into the shadow I gave up the $2,500. I 
saw that he got a ticket and started for San Francisco the 
next day. I felt so sad when I heard a few months later 
that in an attempt to learn how to smoke hop out there, 
to add to his jag repertoire, he had died in a Chinese joint 
after hitting up thirty-six pills. I felt so sad.” 

The ex-ringer operator was plunged in meditation for a 


8 4 


TAKING CHANCES. 


while, the others remaining sympathetically silent, and 
then he resumed in another strain. 

“ Next to the worst jolt I ever got — and the worst was 
the time down in Maryland when one of my plugs with 
two whitewashed barrel spots and a whitewashed fore- 
head star got rained on at the post, practically out of a 
clear sky, and the spots got washed out, and I had to get 
out of the State of Maryland over fences — next to that 
jolt, the way one of my boys threw it into me at a county 
fair meeting in West Virginia was pretty bad. I had 
tongue-hammered that kid pretty hard two or three times 
at that meeting for winning when his mounts weren’t due 
to win and I didn’t want ’em to win, and he got sulky. I 
tried to coddle him up a bit, for I had a real good one to 
pull off on the last day of the fair, and I thought I had 
him all right on my staff again. The real good thing was 
a horse of mine that I had entered in the final race, which 
the jays down there called a mile race for the 1 155 run- 
ning class.’ 1 :55 ! I had a skate with me down there that 
could just common canter a mile in 1 *.45, and he could 
have done it in three seconds better if pinched at any time. 
I had had the plug lose three or four races during the fair 
meeting, and he wasn’t as good as Chinese money in the 
estimation of the West Virginians by the time the race 
that he was going to win came around. My boy was to 
have the mount, and our mutual confidence seemed to be 
restored by the time the good thing was booked to hap- 
pen. But he had an ice-pick up his sleeve for me all the 
time.” 

“ ‘ Didn’t try with the horse, and lost, eh ? ’ asked one 
of the ex-ringer worker’s listeners. 

“ ‘ Oh, no, it wasn’t that,’ was the reply. “ The horse 
won by a tongue, and the boy gave him a beautiful tight 
ride to keep him from winning further off. But he put 


TAKING CHANCES. 


85 


every grafter that he knew, and he knew ’em all, at the 
fair meeting next to what was going to happen, and made 
split terms with all of them. That is, he put ’em on, on 
condition that he was to get half of each man’s winnings 
on the race. Now, I had figured on picking up $8,000 or 
$10,000 easy on that good thing, and I had lain awake 
nights making plans to meet possible hitches. It certainly 
wasn’t treating me right, the way that boy did. I thought 
I’d get as good as 25 to 1, anyhow, at the first betting. I 
intended to take a mess o’ that and then wait for the bet- 
ting to go up, for I confidently expected, and had a right 
to expect, that the nag’s price, in view of what the farmers 
down there thought of him, would go up to 50 or 100. 

When the betting on the race opened I was on hand 
with my wad. Say, I couldn’t get within twenty feet of a 
one of the twelve bookies doing business. I never saw 
such a scramble, even in the 50-cent field at Sheepshead. 
Of course, I thought they were all getting aboard of the 
favorite, and so I drew back, knowing that if they were 
playing the favorite my plug would be going up in price 
all the time. Then I noticed a lot of the educated money, 
the coin of the grafters that I knew around the grounds, 
going in, and I wondered if they were Rubes enough to 
play a favorite in the last race on get-away day. So I 
drew close to the bookies’ stands — as close as I could get 
— and then I found that they were all writing my horse’s 
name. Nothing but my horse. Not a horse in the race 
but my horse. It was a staggerer, that was. Of course, I 
thought of my miffed jockey right away, and I knew he 
had done it. When I finally was able to get up to the 
bookies, I found that my plug’s price had been played 
down from 20 to 1 to 9 to 10 on, and I was so disgusted 
that I stayed off altogether, although I knew my horse 
was going to win. He did win. The boy couldn’t peach 


86 


TAKING CHANCES. 


because his rake-down had been too big, but he showed 
me $3,500 in bills an hour after the race, got off twenty 
feet and told me all about it, and then bolted. I haven’t 
seen him since.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


S7 


EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER. 


Wherein It Is Shown That , When There Is Something 
Doing ” a Bank-roll Is Liable to Be Wrecked. 


“ I heard somewhere the other day,” said one of a party 
of turfmen who were dining together after the McGov- 
ern-Erne fight, “ that Billy Thompson, the ex-Duke of 
Gloucester, is trying to cook up some scheme whereby 
the legal authorities of New Jersey 'll relent and permit 
him to start the old Gloucester merry-go-round again. 
I don’t think he’ll make it stick, if the story is true, 
but if Gloucester ever is started again I know a man 
who’d be very liable to burn the barns down some dark 
night. I don’t think he’d let the Gloucester mud-larks 
and snow bird race-track operate while he lives. 

“ In 1880 this man I’m talking about — he had passed 
up a good grocery business to play the races a year be- 
fore — had nursed together a wad of about six thousand 
dollars, and this gave him a bad case of the Sandow 
vest. He was so chesty over having all that money that 
he concluded he’d try a whirl on the block. There was 
only winter racing going on when he got that smoky 
notion into his hat, and that was at Gloucester. As you 
fellows know, they used to run ’em there in snow up 
to the saddle pommels, and the plug that could make out 
the best without going over the fence, or that didn’t be- 
come crazy from snow blindness, always yanked down 
the money at Gloucester— that is, if he was meant to 
win. 

“ This ex-sugar-and-tea guy was a dead verdant one 


88 


TAKING CHANCES. 


at the bookmaking game when he went on the block 
at Gloucester, but he kept his ears open and his mouth 
shut, and he had quite a streak of luck, besides, from 
the go-off, so that at the end of his first week at lay- 
ing odds he found that he’d averaged a clean-up of about 
$200 a day. You couldn’t see him then without send- 
ing up your card, he was so vast and heap-much. He 
was thinking of going down Dixieway to make a bid on 
the Belle Meade farm, and, by the end of his third week 
on the block, when he had run his $6000 into a bit more 
than $10,000, he was probably the haughtiest gazabo on 
this side of the Rocky Mountains. 

“ One day — it was at the beginning of his fourth week 
at bookmaking — a duck who had a string of good ones 
— of their kind — chasing the Gloucester will-o’-the-wisp 
for the poolroom purses, invited himself to take dinner 
with the ex-grocer with the streak of luck. After they 
had stored the feed away at the high-riding bookmaker’s 
Philadelphia hotel, the man with the string leaned back 
in his chair and sprung what he had in mind. He men- 
tioned the star sprinter of his string. 

“ ‘ You know, of course,’ said he confidentially, to the 
ex-grocer, ‘ that that nag can eat up any horse down 
here at three-quarters of a mile. He’d never be beaten 
at that distance if we let him out every time he went to 
the post to race. But, of course, if I’d let him win every 
time out, there would never be any price on him. He’d 
be a 1 to 20 .shot every time he got a lead-pan on, and 
I’m not going down the line on that kind of prices. 
Neither am I running my string over at Gloucester for 
hygienic reasons. Perceive?’ 

The new bookie perceived. 

“ ‘ Well,’ this oily geezer went on, ‘ that horse is en- 
tered in a six-furlong sprint to-morrow, as you know. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


89 


He'll probably be an even-money favorite. He’ll lose.’ 

He will, hey ? ’ said the new man on the block, sus- 
picious like. ‘ That’s darned good of you to tell me. 
But you’re not telling me that for your health, either. 
He’s going to lose, eh ? ’ 

“ ‘ \ ep, he’ll lose,’ repeated the smooth owner. 4 Now, 
you’re a pretty nice young fellow, ain’t you? ’ I like you. 
Understand ? ’ 

Urn,’ said the ex-grocer. ‘ What’s your graft, any- 
how? ’ 

“ ‘ Well, as I say, that skate of mine is going to lose/ 
said the confidential owner once more. 4 Now, you see this 
thousand-dollar William, don’t you? Well, I want you to 
take a thousand-dollars’ worth of my horse to win 
for my account, see, when you make your book on that 
race. He may be as good as 2 to 1, but he’s going to lose 
anyhow. You see, I just want to pick up an honest dol- 
lar or so. You take this $1,000 of the suckers’ money for 
me on your book, and your reward ’ll be in knowing 
what’s going to happen. You can hunch up the price, see? 
Is it a go ? * 

“ Now, this looked like a pretty good thing to the gro- 
ceryman. It looked like taking candy from a child. If 
that owner’s horse wasn’t going to lose, it looked like a 
cinch that he wasn’t going to risk any thousand-dollar 
bills on the game. So the new bookie told the owner that 
he was on, took his $1,000, and figured on the pounding 
he was going to give the talent the next day. He chuckled 
to himself when the other books only laid even money 
against the sprinter when the betting on the race began 
the next afternoon. 

“ ‘ They wouldn’t do a thing but fall over themselves 
to lay a long price if they knew, like I do, that the favorite 
is going to kerflop,’ mused the ex-groceryman — he wailed 


9 o 


TAKING CHANCES. 


me the whole spiel afterward — and he laid 2 to I against 
the sprinter’s chances on his slate. The other bookies over 
his way looked as if they thought he was wheely, but he 
only exulted whole lots inside of him. 

“ ‘ You are wise people/ he thought, ‘ but this is where 
I get the big end of it.’ 

“ Within three minutes after he had started his slate 
he had taken in the horse owner’s $1,000 worth of his 
horse at 2 to 1. The handicappers just battled to get at 
his book at there figures. Said he to himself, ‘ I’ll just 
tap myself on this watermelon,’ and by the time the horses 
went to the post he had taken in $5,000 of the public 
money at 2 to 1 on that horse that was going to lose, and 
he knew that he’d be just $5,000 to the good. 

“ Of course you chaps are next. When the horses got 
away the skate that the ex-grocer had laid his whole 
$1,000 against walked in on the bit, fifteen lengths to the 
good in a buck-jump. He was under twenty wraps all 
the way from the flag-fall. 

“ The new bookie paid out his $10,000, bought a clay 
pipe and an eight-cent package of punk tobacco, and went 
out of business, and he’s been out of business ever since. 
It took him about a week to get contiguous to the fact 
that the men who collected his $10,000 were the smooth 
owner’s commissioners, but when he went gunning the 
owner had removed his string from Gloucester, and was 
taking a little winter cruise in a felucca in the ^Egean 
Sea. But if Gloucester ever starts up again, and there’s a 
conflagration, I’ll know how it started.” 

“ There’s another chap that I know of who’s been smok- 
ing unfragrant tobacco in a pipe for a good many years 
on account of an outlaw track deal,” said one of the other 
turfmen at the table, “ but he wasn’t a new man at the 
game. He was an old-timer — so much of an old-timer 


TAKING CHANCES. 


91 


that it was up to him to know that, once having made a 
tool of a man or a boy in the racing business, it is never 
the part of wisdom to throw him overboard on the pre- 
sumption that he’s a dead one. Turf followers, as you fel- 
lows all know, have a habit of resurrecting themselves at 
inopportune moments when it seems that they are so 
deeply buried that they’ll never struggle to the top of the 
ground again, and when they do run a shoe-tongue into 
a tan-yard they are more than liable to get hunk with 
former pals who have cast them aside in the hour of ad- 
versity. Now, it is a particularly dangerous thing for any 
man connected with racing to do business with a jockey. 
I never heard of a bit of jockey-tampering that didn’t get 
out sooner or later, to the disadvantage of the man that 
did the corrupting. I guess we all know of cases in which 
jockeys, after being ruled off for crooked work, have be- 
come exacting pensioners on the hands of the men re- 
sponsible for their downfall for long stretches of years. 
The story I have in mind is of a jockey who, while he 
wasn’t set down through following the directions of the 
bookmaker he did business with, was treated with charac- 
teristic meanness by the latter when he was up against it 
owing to an accident ; and the way this jock got even with 
his former tamperer was unique. 

“ You all remember the boy Kelley? He wasn’t exactly 
a boy at the time this thing happened — he was a man of 
twenty-two or so, which probably accounted for the fact 
that when he was riding at Guttenberg he had most of the 
other jockeys faded; give me a rider with a man’s hand 
on his shoulders every time for my horse. Now, the 
morale of Guttenberg wasn’t like unto that pervading a 
theological institution, but Kelley the jock wasn’t any 
worse than his neighbors. He was like all the rest of the 
people mixed up with the weird game at the Gut. It was 


92 


TAKING CHANCES. 


a poor jock at the Gut who didn’t have a bookmaker on his 
staff, and Kelley wasn’t a poor jock by fifty good pounds 
under the saddle. It used to be an off day with Kelley 
when he didn’t put up a ride in accordance with this book- 
maker’s orders. All of the jocks at the Gut did similar 
things, and they were stood for. The hectic flush of hu- 
miliation didn’t mantle the alabaster countenances of the 
Gut stewards to any huge extent when the I to 5 shot was 
beaten a furlong. Kelley was enabled to throw big money 
into his bookie’s satchel, because, being such a top-notch 
rider of outlaws, most of his mounts went to the post fa- 
vorites; so that when he snatched a horse it meant the 
good of the books, and of his bookmaker in particular, for 
the latter would of course lay the longest price in their 
judgment against one that he knew was going to run like 
a mackerel along a dusty road. Kelley profited fairly well 
at the hands of this bookmaker, and on his side he was 
absolutely loyal in his crookedness. He invariably deliv- 
ered the goods. He had the knack of making it appear to 
the people with the field glasses that he was riding like 
a fiend, when in reality he had his horse pulled double, 
and when he was following orders he could permit the 
favorite under him to be beaten out by a tongue on the 
wire in a way that would raise the hair of the folks in the 
stand. 

“ Well, one day Kelley was dumped from a horse he 
was riding when the track was slippery and broke his leg. 
He had been improvident and extravagant, like most of 
the jocks of that day, so that when the accident put him 
on the flat of his back he found himself broke. What was 
more natural than that he should send to the bookmaker 
whose orders he had been following for a long time for 
assistance? He wrote to tne bookie and asked for the 
loan of $100. The bookmaker ignored the request. Then 


TAKING CHANCES. 


93 


the laid-up jockey sent a friend to the bookmaker. The 
latter made some remark about not coughing up for the 
oats and keep of dead ones — figuring, you see, that Kel- 
ley’s injuries were such that he wouldn’t be able to get 
back to the riding game until the close of the meeting. So 
the jockey had to stave off doctors’ and other bills as best 
he could, and I guess that he set his teeth down pretty 
hard and did some robust thinking while his leg was heal- 
ing. 

“ A couple of months after this accident Kelley, some- 
what pale, turned up in the paddock at the Gut one morn- 
ing and announced that he was fit to ride again. His 
services were immediately in demand, and Mike Daly got 
him to ride his horse Gloster in the first race on the card. 
Gloster was the best horse in the race and was certain to 
be favorite. The bookie, who had used Kelley before his 
accident and afterward turned him down, got to Kelley 
by the underground process, through an agent, with the 
inquiry as to whether a little business couldn’t be done on 
Gloster. Kelley, with all the good nature in life, sent word 
that there could, certainly; that he could get Gloster 
beaten by an eyelash. 

“ The betting opened and Gloster was the favorite all 
over the ring at odds of i to 2 on. Then Kelley’s book- 
maker began to shoot the price up — first to 3 to 5 on, then 
to 4 to 5 on, then to even money, and then right up to 6 
to 5 and even 7 to 5 against. The way that bookie hauled 
in the money on Gloster was a caution. It seemed that 
every plunger and casual bettor in the inclosure wanted a 
piece of Gloster at Kelley’s bookmaker’s odds — all the rest 
of the pencillers still held Gloster at 1 to 2 on — and the 
bookmaker took in thousands of dollars on the horse. 
When they were still whacking him with Gloster bets he 
became somewhat nervous and sent his agent to Kelley 


94 


TAKING CHANCES. 


again for reassurance. Kelley told the agent again that 
Gloster wasn’t going to win. 

“ 4 He’s taking in billions on Gloster,’ said the agent to 
Kelley. 

“ ‘ Let him handle the whole mint on t*he nag,’ replied 
Kelley. ‘ Gloster will just about get the place — maybe.’ 

“ In the meantime the judges, who occasionally made a 
bluff at getting haughty and virtuous, got next to the big 
odds that one bookmaker — Kelley's bookmaker — was 
offering against Gloster, and, naturally enough, they be- 
came suspicious. Five minutes before the horses were due 
to go to the post, therefore, they called Kelley into the 
stand and asked him squarely if there was anything doing 
by which Gloster was going to get beat. 

“ ‘ If Gloster doesn’t win this race,’ replied Kelley, ‘ you 
can rule me off for life.’ 

“ Kelley had put every man, woman, child and dog that 
he knew at the track on to the fact that he was going to 
win by a Philadelphia block on Gloster, and the book- 
maker who had turned him down when he was on the flat 
of his back with a broken stilt in the middle of winter 
got the play of all of them. Dollar bets and $1,000 bets all 
looked alike to the bookmaker. He took all the money that 
came along without rubbing. He thought he had a corked- 
up good thing. 

“ When the bugle sounded and the horses emerged 
from the paddock, the bookmaker, with his glasses in his 
hand, was leaning against the rail, and he looked up with 
a grin to catch Kelley’s eye as the jockey rode by on Glos- 
ter. He caught Kelley’s eye, but there was no responsive 
grin. There was, instead, a dirty sneer on Kelley’s drawn, 
pale mug, and, as he caught sight of the leering bookie he 
drew Gloster up for just an instant and spat viciously in 


TAKING CHANCES. 


95 

the direction of the man who had treated him with such 
ingratitude. 

“ The bookmaker saw in that instant that he was 
ditched. His face went white, and he clutched the rail, and 
he was still digging his finger-nails into the rail when, a 
few minutes later, the victorious Gloster, who had won by 
about half a furlong, was led into the paddock, with Kel- 
ley walking alongside of him. When that bookie got 
through paying off the Gloster bets he had taken in he 
was out of business, and when the story of how it all came 
about leaked out, there wasn’t a man in the game that 
didn’t say that the bookie got all that was coming to him.” 


9 6 


TAKING CHANCES. 


THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS. 


And the Evaporation of His Resolution to Have Nothing 
to Do With Them. 


“ Touts/' said Busyday, oracularly, to his companion 
on a train bound for the Bay on Suburban day, “ are the 
derned nuisances of the racing game. You want to watch 
out for them. If by chance you should get separated from 
me in the crowd, don’t you let any of the sharp-eyed, soft- 
voiced ducks talk you into playing this or that one. Just 
you stick to those selections I wrote out for you on that 
piece of paper. They’re the logical winners. A friend of 
mine, whose brother is a bookmaker, handicapped ’em 
for me, and I’m going to play every one of ’em myself. 
That’s the only way to win ; stick to your selections, and 
don’t let yourself be touted. The man who listens to touts 
smokes a pipe. Understand ? ” 

“ Uh, huh,” replied Busyday’s friend, who was from 
Busy day’s native town out West. He had never seen a 
horse race in his life, whereas Busyday was an old-timer 
and learned at the game, having seen three Handicaps and 
two Suburbans ran. 

“ They make kind of a lukewarm effort to keep the 
touts off the tracks,” went on Busyday, disparagingly ; 
“ but the touts are too smooth for ’em, and they’re al- 
ways around, looking for good things like you, old man. 
All you’ve got to do is just to flout ’em from the jump, 
as soon as they edge up to you, and they’ll shoo-fly in- 
stantly, rather than take chances on being spotted by the 
Pinkerton people. Tell ’em to go to the devil, that’s all/' 


TAKING CHANCES. 


97 


“ Uh, huh,” answered Busyday’s friend and guest, 
once more. 

It came to pass that Busyday and his visiting towns- 
man were separated before they had got off the train. 
The car was jammed, and in the confusion of getting 
off they made their exits by different doors. Busyday 
frantically yelled out his friend’s name as soon as he 
found himself alone on the platform, but, of course, he 
got no reply. His friend was engulfed in the crowd. 

“ I s’pose I ought to have held hold of his hand, like 
a fellow does when he takes his sister’s kids out for a 
walk,” he reflected. “ This is blasted mean luck from the 
go-off. The touts ’ll get hold of him now, sure as 
shootin’, and they’ll strip him. Good thing he’s got his 
ticket back to the little old slab of a town where we 
used to play shinny together.” 

Busyday roamed around the grandstand and the bet- 
ting ring for ten minutes before the slates went up 
for the first race, trying to catch sight of his friend, but 
it was no use. His townsman wasn’t visible anywhere. 
Then a sudden swirling and eddying in the betting ring 
told him that the prices were up for the first race. 

“ 111 have to pass the old boy up until I get this bet 
down,” said Busyday to himself, pulling out of his pocket 
the slip of paper that the handicapper had given him the 
evening before. “ Let’s see, what one of ’em have I got 
to win this? Oh, yes; Peaceful — good name, but it 1 
doesn’t sound as if a horse with a name like that could 
run much. I’d rather have a horse called Lightning Ex- 
press, or Cyclone, or Helen Blazes, or something like 
that, run for my money. S’pose, though, this handi- 
capping chap knows what he is doing, and so I’ll just 
put my first ten on Peaceful to win Hey? How’s 
that?” 


9 8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


There was a soft, persuasive buzz right in Busyday’s 
ear. 

“ D’ye notice all the suckers breakin’ their necks t’ 
land on that Peaceful dead one ? ” were the words that 
formed the buzz. 

Busy day jerked his head around suddenly, and he found 
within four inches of his ear the countenance of a young- 
old man with red hair, a freckled skin, and a pale-blue, 
shifty eye. 

“ Dead one ? ” echoed Busyday, the red-haired, young- 
old man smiling amiably in his face. 

“ Lobster,” said he of the pale-blue, shifty eye, looking 
entirely disinterested. “ Out-and-out lobster. Crab. Run 
about a dozen sprints, and still a merry maiden. And 
look at the chancts th’ mutt’s had to win! Leads th’ 
percession into th’ stretch every whirl, and then chucks 
it. A proper dog, Cap. That’s on the dead. Worst 
quitter on th’ grounds.” 

“ Um,” said Busyday, stroking his chin and wondering 
why his handicapper had picked Peaceful. 

“ I got th’ baby,” buzzed the freckle-faced, young-old 
man, after a silence. 

“ Hey ? ” asked Busyday. 

“ For a pipe,” said the shifty-eyed one. “ Say, I don’t 
git out o’ me Waldorf bunk at 3 o’clock every mornin’ for 
me health.” 

“ Is that so?” inquired Busyday, just for the sake 
of saying something. 

“ Not on yer dinner pail,” said the aged youth with the 
shifty eye. “ I light out fer th’ tracks t’ watch ’em at 
their early mornin’ works. Pm a railbird, all right, but 
I know where th’ dough is. I seen this baby that Pm 
tellin’ you about do the five-eighths in a minute flat th’ 
other mornin’, an’ if he ain’t a moral fer this, here’s my 


TAKING CHANCES. 


99 


lid an’ you can eat it,” whereupon the shifty-eyed one 
removed his 50-cent straw hat and offered it to Busy- 
day. 

“ What’s the name of this wonder?” inquired Busy- 
day, trying to work up a superior smile. 

The aged youth bent over, placed his mouth within a 
quarter of an inch of Busyday’s ear, and whispered : 

“ Stuart. He’ll walk.” 

“ Oh, well, then, I’ll waste a ten-spot on Stuart,” said 
Busyday, trying to say it languidly, as if he didn’t take 
much stock in himself or anybody else. Then he plunged 
into the vortex around one of the bookmakers’ elevated 
chairs, got his feet trod upon, his hat jammed down over 
his eyes, and his ribs treated to an all-hands elbow mas- 
sage, and finally succeeded in passing up his ten-dollar 
bill on Stuart to win. 

“ Stuart, thirty-five to ten,” droned the bookmaker 
to the sheet-writer, and then Busyday found himself 
beaten to the outskirts of the crowd. 

“ You on?” he heard in his ear, and, turning, he saw 
the freckle-faced one smiling up at him. 

“ Yep — dropped ten on it,” replied Busyday. “ Kind 
o’ liked Stuart myself when I saw him entered.” 

Then Busyday steered for the lawn to see the finish 
of the race. He was trying to get some sense out of the 
list of owners’ colors on his program, so as to be able 
to distinguish his horse as they raced under the wire, 
when a calm man next to him, with a pair of field-glasses 
to his eyes, mumbled : 

“ They’re off ! ” 

There was a big shout all around. 

“ Lady Uncas out in front,” said the calm man coolly. 
“ She’ll curl up. She seems to be staying, though, at 
that. Nope, she’s collared. Stuart’s nailed her. He 


LjrfC* 


IOO 


TAKING CHANCES. 


walks,” and the calm man put down his glasses as the 
horses galloped past the sixteenth pole. 

Stuart came in all alone, and Peaceful was back in the 
ruck. 

“ I had my suspicions about that Stuart horse right 
along,” said Busyday to himself. He had never seen 
the horse’s name until the evening before. “ Don’t know 
why, but I kind o’ like him. Probably because the 
Stuart were a pretty swift bunch,” and he chuckled to 
himself over his humor as he made his way to the book- 
maker’s line to cash. 

“ Somethin’ easy — like fiindin’ it, hey?” he heard 
buzzed into his ear as soon as he put his foot into the 
betting ring, and there was the old-faced young man, 
grinning complaisantly up at him. 

Busyday handed to the shifty-eyed one, who stuck to 
him right up to the paying-off line, buzzing learnedly 
all the time about the race just ran, a $10 bill out of his 
$35 winning. 

“ Th’ next,” said the red-haired wiseacre of the rail 
when Busyday had fought himself away from the cash- 
ing crowd, “ is what you might call a one-hoss race. A 
one-hoss race, right.” 

“Lambent, of course?” said Busyday, looking at his 
piece of paper with the selections on it. Lambent was his 
handicapper’s selection. 

The freckle-faced screwed the whole left side of his 
face up into one prodigious wink. 

“ Not this cage,” said he. “ Try the next. Lambent? ” 
and he put one large, white, freckled hand over his face, 
as if to hid his confusion, and grinned through his fin- 
gers. 

“Well, Lambent figures to win, doesn’t she?” asked 
Busyday weakly. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


IOI 


“ Who, Lambent ? ” and the shifty-eyed smiled some 
more. “ I’m goin’ t’ match her in a sweepstakes against 
me old aunt, and back me aunt off th’ boards fer a hog- 
killin’. There’s on’y one in this. Skinch. You can tap 
on it.” 

“ Which one ? ” asked Busyday in a wabbly tone. 

Again the aged youth bent over until his mouth was 
within a quarter of an inch of Busyday’s ear. 

Swiftmas,” he replied. “ Been saved up for a good 
thing, right. If he don’t buck- jump in, here’s me lid,” 
and once more he extended his half-dollar straw hat for 
Busyday’s mastication. 

“ Well,” said Busyday to himself between his teeth 
as he made his way through the jostling crowd to one 
of the bookmakers’ stands, “ I guess I’m a weak and 
erring brother, all right, but danged if I don’t play that 
redhead once more, anyhow,” and he got $40 for his 
$20 on Swiftmas to win. Swiftmas won by a head. 

“ They were too foxy t’ win too far off,” Busyday was 
informed by means of a buzz in his ear, by this time well 
known, as he was elbowing his way again to the cash- 
ing line. “ Boy drew it fine so’s not t’ spoil th’ price next 
time out.” 

The freckle-faced old youth got $15 out of Busyday’s 
$40 winning, and then he looked Busyday over care- 
fully and inquired: 

“ How about me ? ” 

“ You’ll do,” replied Busyday, candidly. “ Name the 
next.” 

“ His Nibs, the Prince of Melbourne,” whispered the 
freckle-faced, and Busyday glanced at his handicapper’s 
selections. It was the Prince of Melbourne there, too. 

“ He can’t lose,” said the shifty-eyed. “ Just a pleas- 
ant airing fer him. Nothin’ to it. W’en you put yer 


102 


TAKING CHANCES. 


coin down, you might as well stay right here so’s t’ be 
foist in line. Put a bunch on.” 

“ I’ve got some of their money,” mused Busyday, 
“ and I won’t pass it all back to ’em in a lump.” 

He got $75 to $30 on Prince of Melbourne to win, 
bought three cigars for a dollar and a pint of wine, and 
then suddenly wondered where his townsman was. 

“ No use trying to look him up, though,” he reflected, 
“ in this jam of Indians. Poor old chap, I s’pose he’s 
smashed flatter’n a pancake by this time, without the price 
of a bottle of pop,” and he reproached himself a good 
deal for not having hung on to his guest when they left 
the train. He was aroused from his reflections by the 
yowl, “ They’re off ! ” and by the time he got out to the 
lawn the horses were coming down the stretch. 

“ His Princelets, with his mouth wide open,” he 
heard the crowd yell, and then his chest expanded, and 
he muttered to himself : “ I always did have a soft spot 
for that derned old plug!” For the moment he forgot 
that the Prince of Melbourne happened to be a two-year- 
old. 

“ Oh, w’en I pick up a good one as I go along I 
like t’ put me fren’s on,” buzzed the freckle-faced in 
his ear, as he made for the paying-off line. Notwith- 
standing the fact that the Prince of Melbourne’s name ap- 
peared on his handicapper’s list of selections, Busyday 
very cheerfully gave up one-third, or $25 of his winnings, 
on the two-year-old to the red-haired youth. The latter 
soaked the bills away in his white-and-brown-striped 
trousers, and then he remarked, in an offhand sort of 
way: 

“Well, this is where you pass me up, ain’d it, so?” 

“ Well,” said Busyday, “ I came down to play Ban- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


I03 


astar, and I think I’ll have to stay with that hunch, if 
you’re agreeable.” 

“ Cert’nly,” said the shifty-eyed, with an expression 
more of sorrow than of anger on his lined face. “ Go 
ahead. Help yourself. Have all th’ fun that’s cornin’ 
t’ you.” 

“ Why, what’s the matter ? ” inquired Busyday. 
Ain’t Banastar the play ? ” 

“ And he looks like a duck with a purty good top-knot 
on him, at that,” said the freckle-faced, dreamily, pay- 
ing no attention to Busyday’s question, and apparently 
addressing empty air. 

“ What’s the matter with Banastar ? ” repeated Busy- 
day. 

“ I’m not queerin’ yer fun, Cap,” went on the shifty- 
eyed. “ You come down wit’ th’ Banastar bug in yer 
nut, like all the rest, and I’m not a-switchin’ you.” 

“ Look a-here,” said Busyday, “ what the dickens are 
you giving us, anythow? Don’t you think Banastar’ll 
win the Suburban ? ” 

“ Cap,” said the aged youth, spitting dryly and for the 
first time looking Busyday squarely in the eye, “ there’s 
a mare in this bunch that’ll run things around all the 
Banastars from here to Hoboken an’ back. She kin fall 
down, an’ win. She kin take naps between poles an’ 
walk. She’s a piperino, if ever one was pushed up fer 
geezers to nibble at. But I’m not a-switchin’ you, un’- 
stand?” 

“ Mare, hey ? ” said Busyday, looking over his pro- 
gram. “You mean that Imp?” 

‘‘Ain’t it?” said the freckle-faced. “Well, I guess 
yah. She win th’ last time out with’ 126 up, eatin’ pea- 
nuts down th’ stretch, from a bunch purty near as good 
as this. Banastar? Cap, I ain’t no hog, an’ you’ve 


104 


TAKING CHANCES. 


passed along what coin was a-comin’ to me. I’ll lay 
you 2 t’ i Banastar won’t git one, two, t’ree.” 

“ Dog-goned if I know what to do,” mused Busyday. 
“ Here I’ve been shouting Banastar ever since the Han- 
dicap, and I promised my wife faithfully that I’d play 
Banastar. Say,” addresing the freckle-faced, who stood 
by sorrowfully regarding him, “ is this Imp fast enough, 
that’s what I want to know? Won’t Banastar beat her 
on speed ? ” 

The aged youth held up one thumb vertically and indi- 
cated with the forefinger of his other hand. 

“ De Empire State Express,” said he. 

Then he held up his other thumb. 

“ Steam roller,” said he. “ Take yer pick.” 

Busyday made a sudden dive for a bookmaker’s line. 

“ Which I may remark, in strict confidence,” he said 
to himself as he tugged at his wad and counted out five 
twenty-dollar bills, “ that there may be softer marks be- 
tween here and High Bridge than myself; but, con- 
found that freckle-faced tout’s red head, I’m just a-going 
to slide along with him and play Imp at that, Banastar 
or no Banastar ! ” and ten seconds later the bookmaker 
was taking Busyday’s five twenties and droning out, 
“ Six hundred to $100 on Imp to win.” 

Busyday was lighting the last of his three-for-fifty 
cigars over in a corner of the betting ring when the well- 
known buzz reached his ears again. 

“ On? ” inquired the buzz. “ Good and hard? ” 

“Yep,” said Buzyday. “Hundred.” 

The race is turf history. As Busyday handed the 
tout two crisp $100 bills the freckle-faced remarked: 

“ An’ you ain’t th’ on’y collect I make on this, Cap. I 
got a hayseed on th’ mare fer $300, an’ I had him on 
all th’ rest o’ them good things, at that.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


105 


“ Well, so long, Red,” said Busyday. “ Im getting 
back to town to dinner. Next time I come down I'll give 
you my trade if I see you around.” 

Then Busyday went up into the stand to take a final 
look around for his townsman. He didn’t see him, and 
he started for the gate. Just as he got outside the gate 
he saw his fellow townsman and guest stepping into a 
hack. His fellow townsman and guest looked pretty 
jaunty, but Busyday didn’t notice it. 

“ Hey, there, old man,” he called after his friend, and 
the latter looked around. 

“ Oh, here you are,” said Busyday’s friend, with an 
expensive cigar stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees 
in one corner of his mouth. “Trimmed?” 

“ Nope,” said Busyday. “ I landed on a few little 
good things that occurred to me after I got to looking at 
the program, and I win ’bout a thousand. Poor old jay, 
I suppose they put you out o’ business, eh ? ” 

“ Not by a long sight ! ” said his friend. “ I ran into 
a freckle-faced, redheaded duck as soon as I got in the 
grounds. I lost that piece o’ paper you gave me with the 
whadyoucallem — selections — on it, and so I played what 
this red-headed chap told me to. Copped out 'bout 
$2800, altogether. Had $300 on Imp to win the big 
race.” 

Then Busyday knew to whom the freckle-faced had re- 
ferred when he spoke of a hayseed. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Id6 


A “ COPPER-LINED CINCH ” THAT DID GO 
THROUGH. 


Narrative of the Red-Haired, Freckle-Faced Tout Who 
Had a Good Thing up His Sleeve. 


When the first line of betting on the fifth race at 
Gravesend was chalked up shortly after 4 o’clock in the 
Harlem street poolroom on Wednesday afternoon last, the 
red-haired, freckle-faced tout gave one swift glance at 
the figures, clutched his armful of “ dope ” books and sped 
over to a corner of the room where two flashy, well-fed 
looking chaps sat tilted back in chairs, smoking and un- 
concernedly waiting for the running of a race at Latonia 
in which they had a good thing. 

“ Here’s the soft spot o’ your life,” said the red-haired, 
freckle-faced tout, pulling a chair up alongside the two 
unconcerned-looking chaps. “ This’ll be like pullin’ th’ 
milk teeth out o’ a fox terrier’s face. This is a real dill 
pickle. Are you two cornin’ out into th’ garden, Maud, or 
are you goin’ t’ let this one get away from you.” 

“ Back t’ your dray,” said one of the unconcerned-look- 
ing chaps. “ Another stiff, hey ? T’ your dray ! ” 

The red-haired, freckle-faced tout pulled his chair closer 
to them. 

“ But this is th’ hand-made, copper-coiled mash,” said 
he, earnestly. “ It’s on’y onct in a while that you get them 
people that lays th’ figures out o’ line like they are on this 
one. This is th’ mellow goods. Just send a few aces along 
on it, that’s all. It’s 100 to 1.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


107 


Now you stawp, Red ! ” said the other unconcerned- 
looking man. “ You stawp, you rude thing! ” 

“ He,n come home on th’ bit,” said “ Red.” “ Lemme 
show you where he’s been landin’, an’ you can see if he’s 
any 100 t’ 1 toss. Lemme pass you th’ line, an’ if you 
don t take none o it, then I’m on a cattle boat by way o’ 
Glasgow, and the red-haired, freckle-faced tout opened 
up one of his dope books and started to show the pair of 
flashy looking chaps where Rolling Boer had finished in 
his previous races. 

“ Go take a sail with yourself, Red,” put in one of the 
easy-looking chaps. “ Nothin’ doin’. Rolling Boer, hey? 
Not with Fenian bonds, good when Ireland’s free. Roll- 
ing Boer, you say, Red ? When did they get that one out 
o’ the cavalry? Rolling Boer, ’ll still be jogging down the 
stretch when you’re in bed, Reddy. Say, it’s a wonder you 
don’t dig up a live one ’casionally. Stop trekkin. Winter’ll 
be coming on soon, and you’ll be nix the price of a doss. 
Rolling Boer ! To the woods ! ” 

The red-haired tout mopped his face with a frayed blue 
polka-dotted handkerchief. 

“ Sey, what’s half a ten spot to you people ? ” he said in 
a tone of entreaty. “ The one you’re waitin’ f’r’ll be ’bout 
1 to 4 on, an’ this is sunshine money, at 100 to 1. You peo- 
ple know how they stan’ them 1 to 4 things on their heads 
out in Latonia. Say, take me spiel on this, won’t you, f’r 
a fi’muth? Look where he got off th’ last time out, an’ 
where he finished! If you can’t see him t’ win, take th’ 
20 to 1 third. It’ll be a shame t’ spen’ t’ money — but take 
it won’t you ? ” 

The two complaisant-looking chaps turned away from 
the red-haired tout and began a conversation between 
themselves. The tout looked very warm, and an expres- 
sion of despair crossed his weazened features. He mopped 


io8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


his face again with his blue polka-dotted handkerchief 
and slunk away. He sided up to one of the board-markers 
and said, out of the corner of his mouth : 

“ Say, get an ace down on Rolling Boer f’r me, will 
you? It’s a skinch.” 

The board-marker grinned. 

“ I’m all out, Red,” he replied. “ Pushed me last ace 
up on the last whizz, an’ didn’t get a whistle f’r it.” 

“ This super’s good f’r a deuce in any hock shop — I’ve 
had it in f’r three,” went on the red-haired tout, appeal- 
ingly, pulling out an old silver time-piece and trying to 
pass it to the board-marker. “ Lemme have a buck on it, 
an’ I’ll pass you back five f’r it after th’ ring’s around 
Rolling Boer. How’s that ? ” 

“ I’m all t’ th’ gruel, didn’t I tell you ? ” replied the man 
with the chalk, with some asperity. “ I got a ticker o’ me 
own. You’re puffin’ secon’s, Red. Rolling Boer couldn’t 
beat me little sister skippin’ rope.” 

The red-haired tout walked away with an expression 
of deep misery on his face. 

“ They think they are wise t’ th’ ponies, hey? ” he mut- 
tered. “ It’s bean bag they ought t’ be playin’ ! ” 

He dug a quarter, two dimes and a nickel out of his 
change pocket and looked at the coins dismally. 

“ It’s me feed coin,” he mumbled, “ but maybe I can 
get some piker t’ go along with f’r another four bits.” 

He walked over to a shabby-looking chap who was 
slouching around with his hands in his pockets. 

“ Say, you got a bundle on you? ” the red-haired tout 
inquired of the shabby-looking man. 

The shabby-looking man dug a fifty-cent piece out of 
his left-hand waistcoat pocket. 

“ That’s all I was huntin’ f’r,” said the tout, displaying 


TAKING CHANCES. 


109 


his coins. “ Let’s put th’ two pieces t’gether an’ nail ’em 
f’r $50 each.” 

“ On what ? ” inquired the shabby-looking man without 
any apparent interest whatsoever. 

“ On a pipe,” said the red-haired tout. “ Rolling Boer. 
He’ll make ’em dizzy and stroll in with his head a-swingin’ 
an’ his tail a-swishin’. Do you come in with me f’r the 
half?” 

The shabby-looking man put his fifty-cent piece back in 
his left-hand waistcoat pocket. 

“ You’ll be failin’ out o’ bed in a minute, Red,” said the 
shabby-looking man. “ Not for me. I need the beers — 
ten of ’em.” 

“Yes, you’re a sport right, I think nix,” said the red- 
haired tout, walking gloomily away. “ You’re a dead 
game, with the copper on.” 

His eagle eye caught sight of a fat man with some 
three parts of a jag sitting at the “ dope ” table, alter- 
nately puffing at a ravelled cigar and nodding sleepily. 
This jagged man had on one side of his head a straw hat 
that looked as if it had been rained on and then sat on. 
The red-haired tout went over to him. 

“ Say, your lid’s on the pork all right, ain’t it? ” he said 
amiably to the jagged man. “Been scrappin’ with a cable- 
car? ” 

“ Fade away — fade away,” said the jagged man, sleep- 
ily. “ Do a disappearing stunt.” 

“ I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you,” said the red-haired 
tout, edging over confidentially to the jagged man. “ I’ll 
pass you this cage o’ mine — on’y bought it three days ago, 
and coughed a two-spot f’r it — f’r that one o’ yours an’ 
half a buck t’ boot,” and the red-haired tout removed the 
pretty fair-looking straw hat he was wearing and pushed 


I IO 


TAKING CHANCES. 


it over to the jagged man. The jagged man took his rav- 
elled cigar from his mouth and grinned broadly. 

“ Say,” he said to the red-haired tout, “ you gimme th’ 
tizzy-wizzy — hones’ yo do. Me wear a No. 2 lid? Say, do 
your fadin’ stunt — fade away.” 

The tout picked up his hat, put it on, and walked away. 

“ Now they’ve hammered Rolling Boer down to 80 to 
I, hey? ” he said, looking up at the second line of betting. 
“ B’jee, I’d climb a porch t’ yank out a couple t’ put on 
that one.” 

He was disconsolately biting his nails and looking 
around to see if there was any way out for him before the 
bunch of two-year-olds at Gravesend went to the post. 

“ They’re at the pump at Gravesend ! ” announced the 
board-marker. 

Just as the announcement was made, a little man with 
a straw-colored mustache and a red, white and blue band 
around his straw hat mounted the stairs, passed the spot- 
ter sitting at the door with a nod, lit a fresh cigarette, and 
walked up behind the red-haired tout. 

“ Thay, Red,” he said, “ what’th good in thith ? ” 

The red-haired tout wheeled like a man who’s been 
touched on the shoulder by a deputy sheriff. 

“ You haven’t got a minute ! ” he said, rapidly, to the 
little man with the straw-colored mustache. “ It’s th’ baby 
o’ th’ year! Gimme three aces — two f’r you, an’ one f’r 
me, an’ in four minutes from date you’ll be lookin’ over 
th’ sides of a balloon, chucking off ballast made out o’ 
money.” 

The lisping little man with the straw-colored mustache 
smiled indulgently and pulled out a roll, from which he 
stripped a five-dollar note. 

“ That’th the thmalletht I’ve got, Red,” he said, hand- 
ing over the note to the tout. “ Thay ” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


1 1 1 

He chopped off the question, however, for the tout 
made two bounds for the money-taker’s window. 

“ Three on Rolling Boer, T. L. M. ! ” he shouted, giving 
the initials of the little man with the straw-colored mus- 
tache. “ Th’ other two on th’ same, just plain R-e-d, Red, 
and both bets straight.” 

The man behind the desk grinned. 

“ High-ball mazuma for the house, Red,” he said, twist- 
ing his mustache. “ That one ain’t got a look-in.” 

The tout was back at the side of the little man with the 
straw-colored mustache who believed in him just as the 
operator sung out : “ Off at Gravesend ! ” 

“ Thay, Red,” said the tout’s little man, “ which one of 
’em did you put thothe five ” 

“ Rolling Boer at the quarter by a head ! ” sang out the 
operator. 

“ On that one ! ” said the red-haired tout, giving his 
thigh a whack with his bundle of “ dope ” books. “ It’s a 
pleasant outing for that one ! He’ll ” 

“ Rolling Boer in the stretch by a nose ! ” called out the 
operator. 

“ Thay, he’ll curl up, won’t he, Red ? ” said the little 
man at the tout’s side, nervously. “ Did you play him 
straight or one, two, three ” 

“ Rolling Boer wins by a nose ! ” shouted the operator. 

It was a bit too much for the red-haired tout. He didn’t 
have any words handy. So he slammed his “ dope ” books 
down on a chair, pitched forward, turned a cart wheel, 
and then walked around the room on his hands with his 
coat hanging over his head, and a grin of indescribable 
happiness all over his freckled features. The little man 
with the straw-colored mustache who had believed in Red 
followed the tout about the room. 


I 12 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Thay, what do we win, Red ? ” he asked. " What 
prithe wath that horth ? ” 

“ You yank out $240, an’ mine’s $160,” said the red- 
haired tout, getting on his feet again. 

“ Thay, Red, you’re all right,” said the red-haired tout’s 
benefactor, pumping him by both hands. 

The two flashy-looking chaps who had first been tackled 
by the tout on the Rolling Boer proposition now walked 
up behind him with long faces. 

“ Say, Red, why didn’t you pitch thet at us a little 
stronger, hey ? ” 

“ Get t’ell away from me, you pikers ! ” was the red- 
haired tout’s reply. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


113 


HE “ COPPERED ” HIS WIFE’S “ HUNCHES.” 


Wherein It Is Shown That the Feminine Intuition Is 
Liable to Occasionally Slip a Cog. 

“ Yes, siree,” said the man with the ravelled cigar and 
the granulated eyelids who swung precariously from a 
strap in a car of a returning Sheepshead Bay train the 
other evening, “ it certainly is funny about these here 
hunches that women have, ain’t it? ” 

“ No,” said the two seated men he was addressing. 

“ Certainly is queer what freaky ideas they get into 
their heads,” went on the man with the ravelled cigar, ig- 
noring the lack of encouragement extended to him. “ And 
when it comes to picking out good things on a race-track, 
picking ’em out just on hunch, ain’t they wonders, hey? ” 

“ Nope,” said the two men at whom he was directing 
his conversation. 

“ It sure beats the Painted Post Silver Cornet Band 
how they can stick a pin in a program with their eyes 
shut and light on a 100 to 1 shot that wins a-blinking,” 
continued the man with the granulated eyelids, tearing 
two or three superfluous wrappers off his ravelled cigar. 
“ Their system beats the dope and the handicapping all to 
shucks, don’t it ? ” 

“ Nix,” replied the two men in the seat. 

“ Never had such chance to size up the feminine hunch 
as I did out at Morris Park ’bout six or seven years ago,” 
went on the man with the eccentric cigar. “ Told my wife 
one night during the fall meeting at the park that I was 
going to the races the next day, that a shoe clerk I knew 


TAKING CHANCES. 


1 14 

had told me about a good thing that was going to happen 
— he’d got it from a trainer to whom he’d sold a pair of 
shoes — and I was going after some of it. 

“ 4 Theophilus Nextdoor,’ says she to me, 4 how dare 
you deliberately tell me that you are going to gamble your 
money away, when I haven’t a rag to my back and the 
coal not yet put in ! ’ 

“ ‘ Can’t help it, Clarissa,” says I, 4 I’ve just naturally 
got to invest $50 on this good thing. I know it ain’t right, 
but I’ve got to do it, anyhow.’ 

“ Then she let out on me, and we both got mad. I 
tried to square it up with her the next morning, and at 
the breakfast table I read her the names of the horses 
that were going to run in the race in which I had the 
good thing the shoe clerk had given me. When I came 
to the name of a horse called Jodan, she dropped her 
coffee cup with a clatter and stared at me. 

“ ‘ Jodan,’ said she. Isn’t that short for Joseph 
Daniel? ’ 

“ ‘ Yes’m, I guess so,’ I said, not knowing whether it 
was or not, but anxious to stroke her the right way. 

“ ‘ Is that the horse you are going to invest your money 
on ? ’ she asked me, breathlessly. 

“ ‘ No, it’s another one,’ said I. 

“ ‘ Well, you might just as well stay home, then,’ 
said she, positively. ‘ You’ll lose your money. Jodan 
will win. I dreamt all night last night of my Uncle Joseph 
Daniel McGeachy, who was lost at sea when I was a 
little bit of a thing, and if Jodan is short for Joseph 
Daniel, as it must be, then Jodan will win.’ 

“ ‘ But that’s plain superstition, and races ain’t won 
that way,’ I said to her. 

“ ‘ I don’t care one bit, so I don’t,’ she said to me. 
‘ You will simply be throwing your money away, and I 


TAKING CHANCES. 


US 

need so many things, if you invest it on any other horse 
than Jodan.’ 

“ I tried to argue with her, but it was no go. She told 
me that her lost Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy had 
once won a full-rigged ship race from Shanghai to Bos- 
ton, and was a pretty speedy old cuss in more ways than 
one, and that any horse named after her Uncle Joseph 
Daniel McGeachy couldn’t lose. I told her that, while 
I didn’t know anything about this Jodan horse, I didn’t 
think he could beat the good thing my shoe-clerk friend 
had given me, but she wouldn’t listen to me. The last 
thing she said to me before I left the house was : 

“ ‘ If you are determined to be a horrid, vulgar, dis- 
graceful gambler, you play Jodan. You’ll be sorry if 
you don't.’ 

“ Stubborn, when they get an idea into their heads, 
women, ain’t they ? ” 

“ No,” said the two men in the seat near the strap- 
clutching man with the ravelled cigar. 

" Well, by jing, I got to thinking about my wife’s 
queer hunch on that Jodan horse on my way out to the 
track, and the more I thought about it the weaker I be- 
came on that good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given 
me. 

‘ Women have got something away ahead of sense or 
reason,’ says I to myself on the train on the way out, 
‘ and I sure would feel almighty cheap and no-account 
if my wife happened to be right about her Uncle Joseph 
Daniel McGeachy and this Jodan horse. I sure would. 
I’ve got a good mind to put a little money on that Jodan 
horse anyhow, derned if I haven’t.’ 

“ I was still undecided about it when I got out to the 
track. That’s the edge the bookmakers have got, ain’t 


ii 6 


TAKING CHANCES. 


it — the people that have real good things and then wabble 
when it comes to sticking to them ? ” 

“ Nope/’ said the two men in the seat. 

“ Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that 
race in which I had the good thing, blamed if Jodan 
wasn’t chalked up at ioo to i. My good thing horse 
was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking 
at the prices, getting pulled around and butted into, 
and I had the dingedest time making up my mind what 
I was going to do that you ever heard of in your life. 

“ ‘ If my wife’s hunch is right,’ I thought, ‘ and that 
Jodan horse wins at 100 to 1 without my playing him, 
I’ll never hear the last of it as long’s I’m on top of the 
ground. She’ll be telling me morning, noon and night, 
that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I 
didn’t have enough gumption to take it. And if the 
good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave me wins at 5 to 1, 
I’ll be sore on myself for throwing away a chance to 
pick up $250 if I don’t play it.’ 

“ I walked out onto the lawn so’s I could have more 
room to make up my mind. Then I wheeled around sud- 
denly and dived into the betting ring. 

“ By cracky ! ’ says I to myself, ‘ I’m doing this little 
gamble myself, and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I’m 
going to play that good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave 
me, and nothing else.’ 

“ So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a 
$250 to $50 ticket on my good thing.” 

Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily 
and looked genuinely distressed. 

“ Say, it’s the dickens, ain’t it,” he said, after a pause, 
“ how these things happen ? ” 

The two men in the seat to whom he had been ad- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


II 7 


dressing his conversation exhibited a certain suppressed 
interest as to the outcome. 

“ Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at ioo to 
i ? ” said one of them finally, with a grin that clearly in- 
dicated his belief that he had the result discounted. 

The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit 
the same for the eighteenth time. 

“ Not on your zinc wedding did Jodan walk in ! ” he 
said, puffing away without removing his eyes from the 
match. “ My good thing spread-eagled ’em from the 
jump, and won, pulled up, by eight lengths. Jodan was 
last. It sure is odd about these feminine hunches, ain’t 
it?” 

“ Blamed if it ain’t,” said one of the men in the seat. 

“ I carried a twelve-pound lobster home to my wife 
that night and told her it was a fair replica of her Uncle 
Joseph Daniel McGeachy horse, and she told me that she 
just wouldn’t believe that Jodan hadn’t won until she 
saw the paper the next morning, so there now! She 
caved, though, when I uncovered the $250 and told her 
that she couldn’t get that cerise-silk-lined tailor-made 
dress quick enough to suit me, and she said that she 
might have known that no horse named after her Uncle 
Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn’t have any more 
luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, could win any- 
thing. 

“ Well, a month or so after that I went down to Wash- 
ington on a little matter of business, and took my wife 
along with me. There was horse racing going on near 
Washington then, at a track called St. Asaph, across the 
Potomac in Virginia. 

“ ‘ Clarissa,’ said I to my wife one morning, after I’d 
got all through with my business in Washington and was 
ready to come back to New York, ‘ I think we’d better 


Ii8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


stay over to-day and go to the races at St. Asaph. A man 
that I met in the shooting gallery down the street gave 
me a good thing last night, and I think I ought to see 
to it. It’s going to come off to-day.’ 

“ Of course she told me again that I was going to 
rack and ruin, and never would make anything of myself, 
but I told her that I just naturally had to go over to 
St. Asaph that day and play Jodan. 

“ ‘ Jodan ! ’ she almost screamed at me. ‘ Theophilus 
Nextdoor, how can you have the hardihood to stand ther 
and tell me that you are going to waste your money on 
that horrid beast, when both of us are absolutely in need 
of new fall outfits ? ’ 

“ I told her that I’d see to the fall outfits, but that 
I sure couldn’t get away from that Jodan good thing. 

“ ‘ Why,’ I said, don’t you remember how wild you 
were about this same Jodan horse only a little more than 
a month ago ? ’ 

“ ‘ I just don’t care one bit if I was/ she replied. 4 1 
know and you know that any horse named after my Uncle 
Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn’t have any more luck 
than to go and get himself lost at sea, cannot win, and I 
should think you would be ashamed of yourself to stand 
there and tell me to my face/ etc., etc. 

“ Well, she wouldn’t go along with me to the track 
over at St. Asaph across the Potomac, and so I \yent 
alone. The man I had met in the shooting gallery had 
told me so earnestly about this Jodan horse that I couldn’t 
fail to be impressed by his words, and when I found 
that my wife was so opposed to Jodan’s chances was 
more than ever determined to play him, for I’d learned 
something about the nature of the feminine hunch, don’t 
you see? 

“ It like to’ve carried me off my feet when I saw the 


TAKING CHANCES. 


119 


price on the blacboards against Jodan. Jodan was 
quoted at 150 to 1. The favorite was at 3 to 5 on, and all 
of 'em, the 1 whole fourteen in the race, were at shorter 
prices than Jodan. I clutched the $50 that I had in- 
tended playing on Jodan, thinking that he’d be about 
10 to 1 or something like that, and I just thought and 
thought and thought over the thing. 

“ ‘ By jimminy!’ said I finally, after standing over 
in a corner alone for a while, thinking, ‘ my wife may 
be right about Jodan, and all that, but I came over here 
to play Jodan, and I’m going to play him or just bust, 
win or lose ! ’ 

“ Then I went over to a bookmaker, got a $1500 to 
$10 ticket on Jodan to win. 4 Take that hay out of your 
hair, pal,’ the bookmaker said to me when I passed my 
money over — and went up to the stand to see the race, 
thinking all the time what a serious matter it is to take 
a chance on playing against the feminine hunch. 

“ Jodan, after being practically left at the post, came out 
of the clouds in the stretch, and won the derned old race 
on the wire by a nose from the favorite, and when I 
hired a rig and packed those $1500 over to my wife the 
way she warmed up to her one and only Theophilus was 
sure a caution. 

“ The feminine hunch,” concluded the man with the 
ravelled cigar and the granulated eyelids, “ is all right 
when you copper it, but it won’t do to play it open. Am 
I right ? ” 

“ No,” said the two men in the seat, and then the rush 
to get off the train began. 


120 


TAKING CHANCES. 


A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT. 


He Was Thought to Be a No-Account Cripple , hut He 

Proved Himself to Be “All Horse” When Called 

Upon . 

“ A friend of mine who came here from Chicago for 
the Bennings meeting was telling me about that Jim 
McCleevy mule,” said an old-time owner of thorough- 
breds who is wintering a string of jumpers and breaking 
a bunch of yearlings out at the Bennings track. “ That 
makes a queer story, and there are some strange things 
connected with the thoroughbred game, at that. This 
McCleevy horse wasn’t worth a bag of moist peanuts at 
the beginning of the present racing season. He couldn’t 
beat a fat man. He had never been in the money. He 
was a legitimate thousand-to-one shot in any company. 
He was the candidate for the shafts of a brick cart, when 
by some odd chance he passed into the possession of a 
nice young woman who was going to school somewhere 
in the State of Iowa. The girl’s uncle was mixed up 
some way or another with the turf, and he bought the 
McCleevy plug for a joke, paying a few dollars for 
him. In a. spirit of fun he wrote to his niece that he 
had bought Jim McCleevy in her name, and that the 
horse belonged her and would be run in her interest. 
The young woman didn’t know the difference between 
a race-horse and a chatelaine bag. She was an orphan, 
and struggling to get an education for herself. Her 
ambition was to take a course at a woman’s college, but, 
up to the time of this incident, which lasted throughout 


TAKING CHANCES. 


121 


the spring and summer, her hope of putting this am- 
bition over the plate was pretty shadowy, and it looked 
like it was up to her to get a job teaching a country 
school in order to support herself. But she wrote to 
her uncle that she accepted the gift of the no-account 
racer with gratitude, and inquired if the horse could 
not trot right fast, for, if so, she might be able to dis- 
pose of him to some well-to-do farmer in her neigh- 
borhood. 

“ Jim McCleevy was attached to the string of a good 
trainer, who saw at once that the horse had been under- 
estimated, that he had been badly handled, and that i£ 
would be worth the effort to try to make something of 
him. He spent two or three weeks monkeying with the 
skate and fixing him up, and then he sent him out one 
morning with a lummux of a stable boy on his back and 
put the watch on him. Jim McCleevy breezed a mile in 
i :44, fighting for his head at the finish, and two days 
later he was slapped into a selling race at a mile and a six- 
teenth, with light weight, a bum apprentice lad up, and 
all kinds of a price, for there were some good ones in 
the race, which was at the Harlem track, in Chicago. 
The girl’s uncle scattered a few dollars around the ring 
on the mutt, all three ways, and McCleevy came home 
on the bit. That was the beginning of McCleevy. He 
was put into a couple of races a week at a mile and 
more, at the Harlem and Hawthorne tracks, during the 
entire racing season at Chicago, and he won race after 
race, no matter how they piled the weight penalties up 
on him. When he didn’t win he broke into the money, 
and as there was always a good price on him, seeing that 
almost every time he raced he was pitted against horses 
that seemed to outclass him, the uncle of the girl who 
owned him got some of the money every time. He par- 


22 


TAKING CHANCES. 


leyed the money that he won for his niece on Jim 
McCleevy’s first race, and he got it back and a bunch 
besides every time. The fame of Jim McCleevy spread 
around Chicago, and a Chicago newspaper man went 
down to Iowa to interview the young woman who owned 
the horse. She told him, artlessly, that while she ab- 
horred gambling — well, she certainly did enjoy the pros- 
pect of being enabled to complete her education. Her 
uncle deposited between $8000 and $9000 in her name, 
the amount he had won for her in purses and bets on 
Jim McCleevy, at the wind-up of the racing season, and 
the horse, which developed quite a bit of real class, still 
belongs to her. 

“ Odd, isn’t it, that an underestimated race-horse should 
hop out and not only give a nice girl that had never so 
much as has stroked his sleek neck a chance to fulfil her 
ambition for an education, but win her a start in life that’ll 
probably make her one of the eligible girls in the State of 
Iowa? But I recall a queerer one than that — how a cast- 
off crab suddenly developed into a race-horse and paid off 
a mortgage on a church. 

“ That happened out at Latonia four years ago. I was 
racing a few of my own out there at the time, and saw the 
affair from the beginning to the windup. I’ll have to duck 
giving the names, for the good man who profited by the 
sudden development of the nag he accidentally became 
possessed of is still the pastor of a flock that congregates 
in a pretty little debt-free, brick and stone Roman Cath- 
olic church on the outskirts of Cincinnati. 

“ There was an old trainer hanging around the Latonia 
barns at that time who was in hard luck from a whole 
lot of different points of view. I’d known him on the met- 
ropolitan tracks years before, and he had been, in his day 
of prosperity, a good fellow and a horse-wise man, if ever 


TAKING CHANCES. 


123 


one chewed a straw. When his health went back on him, 
however, six or seven years ago, and he couldn’t per- 
sonally attend to his work — he ran an open training stable 
it was all off with him. The strings that he had been 
handling were taken away from him by the owners and 
put in other hands, and he went up against the day of ad- 
versity with a rattle. He had a few horses of his own, but 
these proved worthless, and most of them were finally 
taken away from him to pay feed bills. On top of it all he 
developed locomotor ataxia, and when I got out to the La- 
tonia barns, four years ago, he could barely move around. 
How he contrived to exist I don’t know, but I guess the 
boys chipped in a dollar or so every once in a while for 
the old man. The only horse that he had left when I 
reached Latonia with my little bunch was an old six-year- 
old gelding that was a joke. Well, call him Caspar. The 
mention of Caspar’s name made even the stable-boy grin. 
Caspar looked a good deal like Diggs, that camel horse 
that’s pulling down the purses now in New Orleans. He 
was all out of shape, with a pair of knees on him each as 
big as your hat ; of all the bunged up, soured, chalky old 
skates that ever I looked over, this Caspar gelding was the 
limit. Yet he had been a pretty good two-year-old and a 
more than fair three-year-old. He had won four races as 
a two-year-old, and six as a three-year-old, but he was 
campaigned and drummed a heap, and when the old man 
shot him as a four-year-old Caspar could just walk, and 
that’s all. He was a cripple from every point of the com- 
pass. He was chronically sour and sore, and he was as 
vicious and ugly as the devil, into the bargain. He never 
got anywhere near the money as a four and five-year-old, 
and he hadn’t been raced at all as a six-year-old, when I 
first clapped an eye on his rheumatic old shape. But the 
old man was a sentimentalist in his way, and he couldn’t 


124 


TAKING CHANCES. 


stand the idea of selling a horse that he had taken care 
of as a baby to some truck driver to be overworked and 
abused. So he hung on to Caspar, fed him, nursed him 
and took care of him generally, just as if the old plug was 
making good for all of this attention. Caspar was a stand- 
ing gag around the Latonia stables. 

“ ‘ Wait’ll I joggle Caspar under the string by four 
lengths in the Kentucky Derby ! ’ a monkey-faced ap- 
prentice jockey would say solemnly to the other kids, and 
then they’d all holler. 

“ Well, about a month after I struck Latonia — it was 
then getting on toward midsummer — the old trainer in 
hard luck who owned Caspar took to his bunk, not to get 
up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days be- 
fore he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had 
known for a number of years. The priest was the pastor 
of that little brick and stone church on the outskirts of 
Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old trainer had been a 
good Catholic all his life, and he received the last offices 
of his faith. Then he said to the priest : 

“ ‘ Father, there’s a crabbed, battered-up old dog of 
mine over at Latonia that I’ll make you a present of. He’s 
worth about one dollar and eighty cents, but he was a 
good racing tool when he was young, and I’ve never felt 
like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He’s crippled 
up some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that 
he could haul your buggy around. I wish you’d take him 
and see that he doesn’t get the worst of it. Caspar was 
pretty good to me a few times when I was up against it.’ 

“ When the old man turns up his toes and dies the 
kindly priest came over to the barns to see if he could get 
any assistance in the way of putting our old hard-luck pal 
under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough for a 
tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father 


TAKING CHANCES. 


125 


thought he might as well have a look at the piece of horse- 
flesh that had been presented to him by the old man. So 
one of the trainers escorted him to Caspar’s stall. 

“ ‘ Could he ever be made any good for driving pur- 
poses? ’ the priest asked the trainer, who smiled. 

He’d kick a piano-mover’s truck into matchwood the 
first clatter out of the box,’ replied the trainer. 

“ ‘ I’ll just let him stay over here for awhile until I de- 
cide what to do with him,’ said the priest, and he went 
back to Cincinnati and buried the old trainer. 

“ Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy 
who had just got a job in one of the barns put a bridle 
and saddle on old Caspar and took him for a breeze 
around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn, and 
a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work 
of the horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the 
rail where I was standing that the old devil looked mighty 
skittish, and was doing a lot of prancing for a hammered- 
to-death skate, with bum knees and all sorts of other com- 
plaints. About a minute later there was a yawp all along 
the rail. 

“ ‘ Get next to that old Caspar ! ’ a lot of the trainers 
shouted. I looked over toward the back-stretch, and there 
was the old skate with his head down, eating up the 
ground like a racehorse. We all jerked out our watches 
just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them 
on him. It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn 
and come a-tearing down the stretch. If he didn’t do that 
five furlongs in 1 :02, darn me. All of our watches told 
the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When 
he passed the judges’ stand Caspar wanted to go right 
ahead and work himself out, but we all hollered at the boy 
to pull him up. The kid stopped the old gelding with diffl- 


126 


TAKING CHANCES. 


culty. Caspar wanted to run, and he had a mouth on him 
as hard as nails. 

“ We got together and talked about Caspar. We were 
dumbfounded, and didn’t know what to make of that ex- 
hibition of speed. Then a trainer who was, and still is, 
noted throughout the country as the most skilful horse- 
patcher that ever got into the game spoke up. 

“ ‘ The old devil’s just come back to himself, that’s all 
there is about it,’ he said. ‘ There are a lot of sprints in his 
old carcass yet. All he needs is some patching. If he’ll 
run like this work he’s just done in five-furlong dashes, 
there’s a chance for a slaughter with him. I’m going to 
ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can’t be 
oiled up.’ 

“ The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morn- 
ing and saw the priest. 

“ ‘ Father,’ said he, 4 1 don’t want to get a man of your 
cloth mixed up with the racing game, but I think I can 
do something with that old racing tool, the old man be- 
queathed to you.’ Then he told the priest about Caspar’s 
phenomenal work that morning. 

“ ‘ Bless me ! ’ said the good man, ‘ I fear it would not 
be seemly for me to ’ 

“ ‘ Oh, that end of it’ll be all right, father,’ said the 
trainer. ‘ If I find I can do anything with the old rogue 
I’ll shoot him into a dash under my own colors, and you 
won’t be entangled with the thing a little bit. It won’t 
cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find that 
he’ll do I’ll get my end of it by putting down — er — uh — 
well. I won’t lose anything anyhow.’ 

“ Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had 
the permission to see what could be done with old Caspar. 
“ ‘ Let me know how you progress,’ the priest had asked 
him. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


127 


“ The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing — and 
we all vowed ourselves to secrecy about the matter — went 
to old Caspar. He was a nag-patcher, as I say, from the 
foot-hills, and the way he applied himself to the reduction 
of Caspar’s inflammations, and to the tonicking up in gen- 
eral of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And 
it came about that early morning’s work of Caspar’s 
that had surprised us so was no flash in the pan at all. The 
old ’possum had somehow or another recovered his speed 
all of a sudden, in addition to a willingness to run, in spite 
of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks Caspar, as 
fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The 
trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so. 

“ ‘ Well,’ inquired the priest. 

“ ‘ He’s going to run in a five-furlong dash day after 
to-morrow,’ said the trainer. ‘ And he’ll walk. It is a cop- 
per-riveted cinch — er-uh — I mean, that is, Caspar will 
win, you see. It’ll be write your own ticket, too, Any 
price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the 
entries, they’ll think it’s a joke.’ 

“ ‘ My son,’ said the father, with a certain twinkle lurk- 
ing in the corner of his eye, 4 gaming is a demoralizing 
passion. Nevertheless, if this animal, that came into my 
possession by such odd chance, possesses sufficient speed 
to — er ’ 

“ ‘ Oh, that’s all right, father,’ said the trainer and he 
bolted for it. 

“ ‘ As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an 
all-around chuckle the following afternoon when the en- 
try sheets were distributed and it was seen that Caspar 
was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a wonder, 
not a word had got out about the patching job that had 
been in progress on the old horse, nor about his remarka- 
ble work. The stable lads and railbirds who were on kept 


28 


TAKING CHANCES. 


their heads closed and saved their nickels for the day of 
Caspar’s victory. 

“ Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confi- 
dently expected Caspar to beat was made up of nine rat- 
tling good sprinters — one of them was so good that his 
price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was the rank 
outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the 
bookies giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of 
them wise enough to rub when they suspected that there 
was something doing. The trainers,’ railbirds,’ and stable- 
boys’ money that went in forced the old skate’s price down 
to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks 
of 100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati — wired our 
commissions over. The old horse favored his left forefoot 
a trifle in walking around to the starting pole, and that 
worried us a bit, for he’d been all right 011 his pin the 
night before. We didn’t do any hedging, however, but 
stood by to see what was going to happen. All of us, of 
course, had enough down on him to finish third to pull us 
out in case he couldn’t get the big end of the money. 

“ It was a romp for Caspar. If I’d tell you the real 
name of the horse you’d remember the race well. Caspar, 
with a perfect incompetent of a jockey on his back, jumped 
off in the lead, and was never headed, winning, pulled 
double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made 
all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn’t go. 
They had to cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch 
of Latonia trainers, including myself, had ever made, and 
there wasn’t a stable boy on the grounds that didn’t have 
money to cremate for months afterward. 

“ After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar 
up for the hogslaughtering — he was close on to $15,000 
to the good, and he didn’t have me skinned any, at that — 
hustled over to the priest’s house. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


I29 


Father, the plug made monkeys of ’em/ is the way 
he announced Caspar’s victory. 

“‘Truly?’ said the priest. 

“ ‘ Monkeys/ repeated the trainer, and then he pulled 
out a huge new wallet that he had bought on the way to 
the priest’s residence. He handed the wallet to the father. 
‘ When I was here, a couple o’ days ago,’ said the trainer, 
looking interestedly out of the window, ‘ I had along with 
me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that 
morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed 
among the poor of the parish — used to be an acolyte and 
serve mass myself, a good many years ago, when I 
was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you see, 
and so I invested it in — er-uh — a little matter of specula- 
tion, to your account, so that it amounts to — er-uh — well, 
I understood there’s a bit of a mortgage on your church, 
you know.” 

“ The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven 
one thousands, one five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill. 
The trainer had put the $50 down on Caspar for the priest 
— without the father’s sanction or countenance, of course 
— at 150 to 1. 

“ ‘ Well,’ went on the trainer, anxious to talk so as to 
save any questions as to the nature of his speculation, ‘ it 
certainly would have done your heart good if you could 
have seen that old nag cantering down the stretch ’ 

“ ‘ It did,’ said the father, with a smile. ‘ It is no sin, 
I conceive, for even a man of my cloth to watch noble 
beasts battling for the supremacy, there being, I take it, 
nothing cruel in such contests. I saw the race.’ 

“ Old Caspar was wound up by that race. He went to 
the paddock as sore as a boil, all of his old infirmities 
breaking out with renewed strength, and he was turned 
out to grass and died comfortably two years ago. If he 


130 


TAKING CHANCES. 


could have known, it might have cheered his declining 
days to realize that he had paid off the mortgage on a nice 
little brick and stone edifice of worship on the outskirts of 
Cincinnati.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


131 


A SEEDY SPORT’S STRING OF HORSES. 


Hoiv the Incredulity of a Lot of Bookmakers Was Turned 
Into Gasping Astonishment. 

A mixed party of turf followers in Washington for 
the Bennings meeting, and Washington men about town, 
had a cafe talk the other night about some things that 
have happened in former years on running tracks, legiti- 
mate and outlaw, in this neighborhood. 

“ When the outlaw track over at Alexander Island, 
across the Potomac, was running a few years back,” said 
a New York player, “ I came down here from the wind- 
up meeting in New York one fall to see if there wa§ any- 
thing in the game in these parts. Then, as now, I was 
playing, and not laying. So this Alexander Island hap- 
pening that I’m going to tell you about didn’t bother 
me any, bad as it knocked a lot of the books. 

“ I got here before the Alexander meeting began. A 
couple of days before the game was to be on, while I was 
in the Pennsylvania avenue refreshment headquarters of 
the boys who came here from New York and other tracks 
to write the tickets, a seedy-looking chap, who looked as 
if the elements had conspired to make him smoke a bum 
pipe in the game of life for a long time previously, walked 
in and edged around to the back room where the bookies 
were figuring on the amount of fresh money they were 
about to begin taking out of the national capital. The 
tough-looking man had a horsey look and a horsey smell 
about him, and as soon as I saw him I knew that he fol- 
lowed ’em in some kind of a hanger-on capacity. He 


32 


TAKING CHANCES. 


walked over to a table where a number of the bookmakers 
were seated. 

“ ‘ Say/ said he, leaning his hands on the table and 
addressing the party in general, 4 you people are sports, 
ain’t you? ’ 

“ The looks the bookies gave the shabby-looking man 
were intended to convey to him the idea that they weren’t 
publicly posing as hot tamales, anyhow. The man got 
no reply. 

“ ‘ You’re going to make books across the way, ain’t 
you ? ’ the up-against-it-looking chap asked, with an in- 
quiring look all around. 

“ ‘ Well, what if we are ? ’ asked one of the bookies, 
just for the good-natured sake of breaking the silence. 

“ ‘ Well/ said the down-at-the-heel sport, ' I’ve got a 
couple o’ nags that have been running for the past six 
weeks over at the Maryland outlaw. They haven’t been 
one, two, six in any race over there, and I’ve gone broke 
paying entrance fees for ’em. Maybe they’ll be able to 
do better over across the way at Alexander. I want to 
chuck ’em in a couple over there, anyhow, for luck. But 
I owe $30 feed bill to the Maryland outlaw people, and 
I can’t get my plugs away from there until the thirty’s 
paid. Now, you people are sports, and so’m I. What I 
want to know is, will you people cough up the thirty 
for me as a loan, so’s I can get that pair o’ mine down 
here ? ’ 

“ The bookies listened to the man with gradually in- 
creasing smiles, and when he finished they gave him the 
laugh in chorus. 

“ ‘ Stop your kidding/ said one of them. ‘ I can get 
all the outlaw racehorses I want for $2 a head/ 

“ They all chipped in with a crack at the doleful-look- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


133 


ing sport, who appeared to be rather a guileless sort of 
chap for a man with a short stable of racers. 

They’re a good pair, all right, and one of ’em’s on 
edge, too,’ he persisted. ‘ He worked six furlongs in 
1 :2 1 flat a couple of days ago.’ 

“ The bookies all looked at the man as if he were de- 
mented. 

“ One twenty-one flat for a six-furlong route ! ’ ex- 
claimed one of them. ‘ Why, look here, my friend, you’re 
not smoking hard enough to suppose you can win down 
here with a skate that does well when he works six fur- 
longs in that time, are you ? Don’t you know that there’s 
a whole bunch over there now that can go that route in 
1 : 16 or better? ’ 

“ ‘ Well, they’ve got a chance, anyhow,’ said the shabby 
man. ‘ Do I get the $30 to get ’em out o’ hock ? ’ 

“ The bookies all turned their faces the other way, 
then, and when the man with the pair of hocked nags 
saw that it wasn’t any use he dug his hands into his 
pockets disconsolately and shambled out. 

“ On the day that the meeting opened I saw the shabby 
man in the betting ring. I was behind him when he 
handed one of the bookies a $5 bet on one of the horses 
entered in the second race of the day. The bookmaker 
had belonged to the party that gave the laugh to the 
shabby man when he asked for the $30. 

“ ‘ Playing ’em, eh ’ said the bookie, smiling at the 
run-down-looking man. ‘ Couldn’t get your pair away 
from the Maryland outlaw, I suppose.’ 

“ Yes, I dug up and got ’em out,’ said the man. 
‘ They’re here now. The one you just gave me a ticket 
on at $100 to $5 belongs to me.’ 

“‘Oh, is that so?’ asked the bookmaker. “Well, I 


134 


TAKING CHANCES. 


hope you win. But you’ve got a couple of 3 to 5 shots 
to beat, you know.’ 

“ ‘ I got a chance/ was all the man said, walking 
away. 

“ I took a. look at his horse, the rank outsider in the 
race, when he went to the post with the others. He was 
a six-year-old gelding, and he looked rank and broken 
down. A boy that the shabby man had brought along 
from the Maryland outlaw was on the horse. It was a 
mile race, and the horse was twelfth in a field of twelve. 
I saw the gloomy-looking, shabby man in the paddock 
after the race superintending the rubbing down of his 
nag. He seemed to be a whole lot in the dumps. 

“ The same horse was entered in the fourth race on 
the next day’s card. It was a field of crack outlaw per- 
formers, and his horse was again the extreme outsider 
at 40 to 1. I saw the shabby man walk around putting 
down $2 bets here and there on his plug, and I felt 
sorry for him. The bookies simply smiled commiserat- 
ingly at him. The hard-looking man’s horse finished 
ninth in a field of nine. 

“ * Why don’t you cut it out? ’ asked one of the book- 
makers of the man with the tough appearance. 4 You’re 
wasting your stake.’ 

“ ‘I got a chance,’ was the reply. 

“ The man got out his other horse on the following 
day. He got 50 to 1 on him for the six-furlong race, and 
his plug, another rank and no-account looker, finished 
last. This was the horse that could work six furlongs 
in 1 *.21. The seedy man’s confidence in his pair of skates 
seemed rather pathetic to me. 

“ After each of his horses had been in about half a 
dozen races each, always finishing last, the both of them, 
and the seedy man putting twos and fives down on them 


TAKING CHANCES. 


135 


right along until the bookies felt like not taking his 
money, I thought he’d take a tumble and quit the game. 
But on the eleventh day of the meeting his ‘ mile racer/ 
the six-year-old gelding, was entered again. He went 
to the post with a field composed of the cracks among 
the outlaws. I happened to be close to the seedy man 
when he went around according to his custom, putting 
down small bets on his horse. He seemed to be rather 
better fixed than usual that day, for he had quite a 
bundle of fives with him. 

What do I get on my horse?’ he asked the first 
bookie he struck. 

“ The layer grinned, for he knew there were eight or 
ten good ones in the race, three or four of them quoted 
around even money. 

“ I’ve got 75 to 1 hung up about him, and all you 
want of it/ said the bookie. ‘ You can write your own 
ticket, in fact/ 

“ ‘ Hundred to I?’ asked the seedy man. 

“ ‘ Why, sure/ replied the bookmaker. And he took 
$5 of the ‘ owner’s ’ money at 100 to 1. Just out of curi- 
osity I followed the seedy man in his tour of the books 
and I saw him put down $70 in $5 bets on his horse to 
win at 100 to 1. It struck me then that there was 
to be something done on the seedy man’s horse. But 
I wasn’t capping the bookies’ game, and I’ve got 
a fad for minding my own business, anyhow, and 
so I kept off the race and went into the stand to watch 
it. I had a hunch to play the seedy man’s horse for a 
good wad, but I reflected that if I got on and the good 
thing went through the bookies ’ud be suspicious about 
such a well-known player as I was being in on it, and 
in the investigation the seedy man might be cut out, and 


136 


TAKING CHANCES. 


I didn’t want to knock him. But I surely was a whole 
lot interested in the way that race was to come out. 

“ I took a good look at the seedy man’s horse as they 
filed past the stand to the post. He looked much better 
and pretty nippy at that for such a rancid outsider. 
The same boy that had ridden the horse in his first race 
at Alexander Island and landed him nowhere was up. 
It was a mile race. 

“ The favorite, a horse called Walcott — 4 to 5 on in 
the betting — got off on the right foot with a jump and 
started to tiptoe the field. At the quarter he led by three 
lengths, with the second choice, a good outlaw named 
Halcyon, beginning to set sail for him. The rest of the 
field of thirteen were all strung out, the seedy man’s 
horse ’way in the ruck. But I kept my glasses on that 
horse all the way, and I could see that at the half he was 
under the devil’s own pull. The boy had half a dozen 
wraps on him and I felt then, even if the favorite was 
still a good four lengths in the lead, and going easily, 
that there was but one horse in the race, and that horse 
the seedy man’s. It was a watermelon just opening, but 
I suppose I was the only man at the track that happened 
to have got next to the game. The judges didn’t ob- 
serve, of course, that the seedy owner’s horse was under 
twenty wraps, for they looked upon him as a dead one 
and paid no attention to his running. 

“ At the far turn Walcott, the favorite, was still three 
or four lengths in front, Halcyon, the No. 2 choice, hav- 
ing fallen back, beaten out. They were all in a bunch 
behind the leader, and all going mighty well at the 
head of the stretch. All the time I had my glass focused 
on the horse belonging to the shabby man. Walcott 
seemed to be just galloping, as I say, at the head of the 
stretch, when I saw the jockey suddenly sit down on 


TAKING CHANCES. 


137 


the shabby man’s horse and start to ride a-horseback. It 
was pretty, I tell you, to see that old six-year-old hop 
out after the galloping favorite and chase him down the 
stretch. The old horse, without a bit of whipping or 
spurring — the boy had simply given him his head — 
pumped up like an express engine, and the favorite was 
taken out of his gallop and extended, under whip and 
spur, before they were half way down the stretch. Pass- 
ing the stand, Walcott and the seedy man’s horse were 
nose and nose, the latter gaining at every jump. Walcott 
was beaten a head on the wire by the rank outsider in a 
pretty finish. 

“ The stewards had the seedy man in the stand imme- 
diately and then called the boy up. It was an astonish- 
ing reversal of form, and action seemed to be called for. 
The seedy man’s story was straight, however. He had 
given his horse a half pint of whisky before the race and 
he supposed that was responsible for the win. Doping 
horses was all right at Alexander, and so the stewards 
couldn’t kick about that. The stewards touched upon 
the ringer question, but the seedy man was such a simple 
kind of duck, and his story was so connected about 
past owners of his two horses and their life-long careers 
on the outlaw tracks, that the stewards finally declared 
the race all hunk and the bets stood. 

“ I saw the shabby man cash his $70 worth of 
100 to 1 tickets. He didn’t gloat any over the bookies 
who had grinned in his teeth before the race — just col- 
lected his money quietly, saying: ‘Well, I had a chance, 
didn’t I ? ’ The bookies were confident that the seedy 
man had a mighty valuable pair of ringers on his staff, 
and that one of them had just won the mile race in the 
beautiful, finely-drawn nose finish, but they couldn’t 


i 3 8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


welch on their bets. With his $7000 the seedy man took 
his string of two away the next day. 

“ I ran across him last summer at the St. Louis Fair 
Grounds' racing. He was no longer a seedy man. He 
was covered with gig lamps, and he had it in every 
pocket. Said I to him : 

“ ‘ D'ye remember that neat 100 to I thing you pulled 
off in Washington a few years ago? There was some 
quality in that old outlaw of yours that got the money.' 

“ He looked at me with a broad grin. 

“ ‘ Outlaw be damned,’ said he. That horse was one 
of the cracks out of the West, on licensed tracks. He 
was a bit of paint. He had done a mile in 1 1395/2 twice 
— round miles — and he was as game as a wild turkey 
egg. Me and my pardner pulled down $20,000 or so, 
running him as a ringer all over the country. I was 
going to open my six-furlonger in Washington that time, 
but $7000 was enough. My six-furlonger was a crack 
from Frisco. He was dyed, too. Six furlongs in 1 114 
was a common canter for him. The Willie Wises back 
in the East are not so many at that, are they ? ' " 


TAKING CHANCES. 


39 


THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST “ BUB.” 

It Referred to a Long-shot Horse, but It Came Near 
Wrecking a Happy Home. 


When the senior partner of a young two-handed firm 
of patent attorneys reached the firm’s office in West 
Broadway on Monday morning last his eye caught sight 
of a telegram addressed to his junior partner on the lat- 
ter’s desk. As the junior partner was in Washington 
and wasn’t due back in New York until 4 or 5 o’clock in 
the afternoon, the senior partner opened the telegram. 
It was a night message from St. Louis, and it read as 
follows : 

“ Hammer Jim Conway. Punch him your limit. Don’t 
let anything scare you out. He’s easy. Bub.” 

The senior partner scratched his head over this. 

“ Conway — Jim Conway,” he muttered to himself. 
“ Now, who the dickens can Jim Conway be, I’d like to 
know? We’ve got no client named Jim Conway, and 
we’re not fighting any infringement case in which a Mr. 
Conway is the defendant. Darned funny telegram, this 
is.” 

The senior partner turned the message upside down 
and every which way, but the longer he looked at it 
from various points of view the more puzzled he became. 

“ Mighty belligerent sort of an affair, too,” he mused. 
“ Now, what has this Jim Conway done to my partner 
that he needs to be punched for it? And who’s this 
Bub? Bub! That’s a deuce of an undignified name for 
a man to put on paper. Great Scott! I wonder if my 


140 


TAKING CHANCES. 


junior partner has gone in for prize fighting at that Jer- 
sey athletic club he belongs to? Perhaps he’s been 
matched to box some fellow member named Jim Conway, 
and this Bub chap down at St. Louis is wiring him en- 
couragement. Nope, that can’t be right, either. My 
junior partner has been taking on fat at an alarming rate 
lately, so that he can’t be training for a boxing contest.” 

He took a few turns up and down the office, holding 
the telegram out at arm’s length. 

“ I hope the boy don’t get into a serious mix-up with 
this Jim Conway fellow, whoever he is,” he muttered 
nervously. “ I don’t believe the boy has done anything 
that he’d be ashamed to have me know about, and yet it’s 
blamed queer that he should be getting telegraphic de- 
spatches from people by the name of Bub, urging him to 
employ physical force for the subjugation of a chap with 
such a Boweryesque sort of name as Jim Conway. The 
question is, what’s the boy done to Conway, or Conway 
to him, that it should be necessary for one or both of 
them to resort to fisticuffs? Now, if the boy were to get 
mixed up in a brawl with this Conway there’d be the 
deuce to pay. It ’ud get into the papers, and it might 
have a serious effect upon our tidy and growing practice. 
I wish that junior partner of mine were a bit more level- 
headed. He’s too clever and industrious and promising 
to have anything whatsoever to do with folks who travel 
under such names as Conway and Bub, and I’m going 
to give him a mild little personally conducted talking to 
when he gets back from Washington this afternoon. 
Why, I wouldn’t have him get into a street fight, or a 
fight anywhere else for that matter, for big money — not 
only for the sake of the firm, but for his own sake. He’s 
pretty handy with his maulies, and all that, but this fight- 
ing business is not the thing for gentlemen, not by a long 


TAKING CHANCES. 


141 

shot. I just wish I could find out who this Conway duffer 
is, anyhow. ,, 

The young woman who manipulates the typewriter for 
the firm came in just then. 

“ By the way, Miss Bringlunch,” the senior partner 
said to her, “ have we any person of the name of Jim 
Conway on our list of correspondents ? ” 

“ No, sir,” she promptly replied. “ We’ve got a Con- 
ners, Coleman, Coulter, Conneff, Curran — lots and lots 
of C’s — but no Conway.” 

“ So I thought,” said the senior partner. “ Er — by the 
way, did you ever happen to hear Mr. Barlock refer to 
a person by the name of — er — Bub ? ” 

The young woman smiled as she tied her black sateen 
apron in the back. 

“ I’ve heard him call the newsboys who come into the 
office with papers Bub,” she replied. 

“ Er — yes, yes,” murmured the senior partner, “ so 
have I. But this is a St. Louis Bub. Well, no matter.” 

The senior partner dived into the mass of papers on 
his desk, but he couldn’t get the bloodthirsty telegram 
to his junior partner out of his mind. He was puzzling 
over it still radiant when his junior partner’s young 
wife came along toward 11 o’clock in the morning. She 
wanted to find out the exact hour her husband was due 
back from Washington. 

“ He’ll be here a little after 4, I guess/’ said the senior 
partner. “ Er — by the way, Mrs. Barlock, does Jack 
number among his friends or acquaintances anybody by 
the name of Jim Conway?” 

“Jim Conway?” repeated the junior partner’s wife, 
with a finger at her lip. “ Why, no, not that I know of. 
I never heard him say anything about a Mr. Conway. 
Why? ” 


142 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Oh, nothing,” said the senior partner, in a constrained 
sort of tone, putting away the message from St. Louis 
for the fiftieth time. 

The wife of the junior partner suddenly looked 
alarmed. 

“ That telegram ! ” she gasped, noticing the senior 
partner’s furtive manner of slipping the despatch into his 
pocket — “is anything wrong with Jack? Has the train 
been wrecked ? Has the” 

And she started to her feet in great agitation. 

“ Calm yourself, calm yourself,” said the senior part- 
ner, also rising and smiling reassuringly. “ There’s noth- 
ing the matter. Train wrecked? Why, the idea! How 
did you ever get such a notion” 

“ But that telegram that you handle so mysteriously,” 
said the junior partner’s wife, not yet over her alarm. 

“ What telegram — this ? ” said the senior partner, tak- 
ing the night message from St. Louis from his pocket. 
“ Why, this is an ordinary — er — business telegram ad- 
dressed to Jack from St. Louis, and it’s” 

“ Let me see it, please, if it’s for Jack,” said the junior 
partner’s wife, holding out her neatly gloved hand, and 
the senior partner could do nothing else but pass it over. 

“ ‘ Hammer — Jim — Conway. Punch — him — your 
— limit. Dont — let — anything— scare — you — out. He’s 
easy. Bub/ ” the junior partner’s wife read, slowly and 
distinctly, her eyes widening at each sentence. “ This, 
then, is the Mr. Conway that you spoke of. Mr. Top- 
knot, what is the meaning of this? What in the world 
is the” 

“ You can search me,” said the senior partner des- 
perately. “ Er — that is, it’s all as mysterious to me as 
it apparently is to you. I’ve been bothering my head 
about it all the morning. I wouldn’t have worried you 


r 


TAKING CHANCES. 


M3 


by showing it to you, but as long as you asked to see 
it, why, of course’' 

And the senior partner coughed behind his hand and 
looked dismal. 

The junior partner’s wife paced up and down the office 
with the telegram in her hand. 

“ Why, it looks as if Jack had an enemy named Jim 
Conway, and that he intended to fight him, doesn’t it?” 
she exclaimed beseechingly to the senior partner. “ I’d 
just like to know who this horrid, nasty ruffian who signs 
himself Bub is, that’s all. My Jack fighting a man with 
such an awful, ’longshoremanish name as Jim Conway! 
Why, that name sounds like the names of the roustabouts 
we read of in the papers who attack their poor wives 
with cotton hooks and throw burning lamps at them. 
And goodness gracious sakes alive ! the very idea of Jack 
Barlock ever dreaming of lowering himself by getting 
into difficulties with such — oh, I don’t know what to 
think of it all ; indeed I don’t ! ” 

And she strode up and down the office again in great 
agitation. 

“ Now, now, now,” put in the senior partner comfort- 
ingly. “ We don’t know anything about the contents 
of the message, and it may be that this Mr. Conway is 
— er — why, the fact is, come to think of it, it may be a 
message in code. Jack’s got a code of his own, you know, 
and maybe he” 

The wife of the junior partner was looking at him 
so suspiciously, however, that he could’t go on. An ex- 
pression just a trifle harder than was exactly becoming 
gradually stole into her face, and she walked over close 
to where the senior partner sat in his revolving chair. 

“ Ah,” she said in a hard tone, “ I begin to see. You 
are trying to cover up something — you men always stick 


H4 


TAKING CHANCES. 


together in these affairs. It may be that this Mr. Conway 
is married, and that Jack — great heavens! if I only 
thought it! If I even dreamed that such a thing could 
be — after all the sacrifices I’ve made for Jack — living 
away from mama all this time — and” 

Then she reduced her handkerchief to a wad about 
half an inch in diameter and began to dab at the corners 
of her eyes. 

“ My dear girl,” said the senior partner, “ I give you 
my solemn word that I know no more about that mes- 
sage, nor about Mr. Conway, than you do. I never 
heard of Mr. Conway in my life before I opened that 
telegram. My dear Mrs. Barlock, I am sure you are ex- 
aggerating the importance of this despatch. There is no 
reasonable ground whatsoever upon which you can base 
any — er — accusation against the boy, and, as I say, it is 
possible — in fact, it’s more than probable — that this mes- 
sage is in Jack’s private code, and that” 

“ I — dont — believe — any — such — boo-hoo” And 

the lovely young matron began to rock herself to and 
fro and to dab at her eyes unremittingly. “ It’s just as 
plain as day that Jack has done some wrong to this poor 
Mr. Conway, and this friend of Jack’s in St. Louis, named 
Bub, has heard that Mr. Conway is looking for Jack, and 
he has sent him this telegram to warn him to be on his 
guard — and — boo-hoo — who would ever dream that my 
Jack would get himself involved in such an awful” 

Her feelings overcame her again at this point, and she 
was unable to proceed. 

“ Mrs. Barlock,” said her husband’s senior partner, 
severely, rising and confronting her, “ I am surprised at 
you — I am, indeed. I was certainly of the opinion that 
in a matter of this sort you would at least give your 
husband — a most considerate husband — the benefit of the 


TAKING CHANCES. 


145 


doubt ; that you would at any rate give him an oppor- 
tunity to explain himself. How do we know what he 
is to Conway or Conway to him ? ” And the senior part- 
ner, growing eloquent, declaimed as if he were speaking 
of Hecuba instead of the mysterious Conway. “ Is it 
not more than likely that you are doing him a grievous 
wrong by even so much as imagining for a moment that 
this extraordinary telegraphic communication from — er 
— this Bub — person has any reference whatsoever to — er 
— uh — domestic or family affairs? Wait until Jack re- 
turns, my dear Mrs. Barlock, and I’ve not the least doubt 
that he will explain everything to your entire satisfac- 
tion, and” 

“ Oh, yes, explanations — explanations ! ” exclaimed the 
junior partner’s wife, giving her eyes a final dab and ris- 
ing. “ You’ll telegraph him on the train to have some 
sort of an explanation ready, and then he’ll come in here 
with a deeply aggrieved countenance — just as if he had 
had no part at all in endeavoring to break up this poor 
Mr. Conway’s home and tell me hypocritically that I’ve 
wronged him and all that. I know you horrid men and 
the way you stand by each other through thick and thin, 
no matter how wicked you know each other to be. I shall 
be back here at 4 o’clock, when Jack is due, Mr. Top- 
knot, and notwithstanding the way he is treating me, if 
there is any possible way I can prevent him from meet- 
ing this Mr. Conway and having a disgraceful alter- 
cation with him, I shall do it. And I promise you that 
I shall be able to detect very easily whether he is telling 
me the truth or not when I demand him to explain this 
terrible business.” 

Saying which, the junior partner’s wife pulled her veil 
down and swept out of the office with the general air of 
a deceived wife in a play. 


146 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Huh ! it’d naturally be thought I’d know enough 
not to make such an egregious ass of myself as to show 
her that telegram ! ” growled the senior partner to him- 
self. “ There’ll be all kinds of a bobbery around here 
this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter 
proves to be something that Barlock wouldn’t want his 
wife to know about — and I’ve no doubt now that it will 
prove just that way, the young idiot! — why, he’ll be 
sulky with me, and there’ll be little or no work done on 
those new cases, and — oh, it’s a devil of a mess all 
around, that’s what it is ! ” 

For all of which, however, the senior partner had his 
work to do, and he pitched in and was up to his ears 
in it until about half-past 3, when the junior partner’s 
wife, with tightly pursed lips and an air of ominous calm, 
arrived at the office with her mother, a handsome, 
haughty, uncompromising-looking woman with a great 
mass of white pompadour hair and an expression of un- 
yielding austerity. The junior partner’s wife and her 
mother replied to the senior partner’s courteous greetings 
with unusual stiffness, plainly indicating their joint be- 
lief that he was in league with the absent junior partner 
in his nefarious doings, or that he was at any rate at- 
tempting to shield the young man. 

“ Shall I turn on the electric fan, madam ? ” the senior 
partner politely asked the junior partner’s wife’s mother. 

“ I am quite cool enough, thank you,” said the junior 
partner’s wife’s mother, snappily. 

“ Shall I fetch you a glass of iced water ? ” he asked the 
junior partner’s wife. 

“ You are very kind, but I am not in the least thirsty,” 
she replied in a tone which seemed to convey the idea 
as plainly as words that she feared he might put some- 
thing in the water that wouldn’t do her any good. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


147 


The senior partner turned to his work. Thus the three 
sat in unbroken silence for fully fifteen minutes, when 
the sound of a blustery, cheerful voice was heard in the 
office boy’s anteroom, and a few seconds later a tall, broad- 
shouldered, frank-faced young man entered the office. 
When he saw his wife he made for her with both arms 
extended. 

“ Why, hello, there, Patsy ! ” he said. “ I didn’t know 
you’d be waiting for me, or I’d have come a-running — 
why, what’s the matter here, anyhow ? ” 

The junior partner’s wife had shaken herself loose and 
averted her face when her husband had attempted to 
fold her in his arms. He stared at her for a moment, 
and then he stared at his mother-in-law. 

“ What’s up, mom ? ” he asked his wife’s mother. 
“ What have I been and gone and done now, Pd like to 
know? Did I leave the water running in the bathroom 
before starting for Washington, or have you lost my 
bull-pup again, that you all look so queer — or what the 
deuce is it all about ? ” 

Neither of the women vouchsafed him any reply, and 
he turned to his senior partner. 

“ I say, Topknot, look here; are you in on this?” he 
said to his senior partner, who was twiddling his thumbs 
and looking very much confused. “ Did I rob a bank in 
my sleep last week, or have the papers come out and ac- 
cused me of being a member of the Ice Trust, or” 

“ My boy,” the senior partner interrupted, judiciously 
rising and taking the mysterious telegram from the inside 
pocket of his frock coat, “ the telegraphic message which 
I have in my hand, and which, I regret to say, I opened 
this morning, knowing that you would not be back in New 
York until late in the afternoon, has been the occasion, 


i4 8 TAKING CHANCES. 

owing to its somewhat mysterious contents, of the seem- 
mg 

“ Let’s see it, Topknot,” said the junior partner, reach- 
ing for the telegram. 

He spread it out and glanced over its two lines. By 
the time he got through reading it he was in a frenzy of 
excitement. He jerked his watch out and looked at it. 

“ I’ve just got time,” he muttered to himself, hastily. 

I’ll just about be able to make it. Patsy, you stay 
here with your mother until I get back. I’ll be back in 
twenty minutes or half an hour. Tell you all about it 
when I get back,” and he was out of the office door and 
down the steps like a boy breaking out of a little red 
schoolhouse for recess. 

A vacant cab happened to be passing just as he got 
inside, and he hailed the driver and darted into the ve- 
hicle. 

“ Drive like the devil to ’s ! ” he shouted to the 

driver, and in something under three minutes he had 
rushed into the upstairs poolroom about four blocks from 
his office. 

The second line of betting was in on the second race 
at St. Louis, and the horse Jim Conway was the rank out- 
sider at 60 to i. The junior partner crowded his way up 
to the counter and laid down a ten-dollar note. 

“ Gimme Jim Conway,” he said to the man behind the 
counter. 

“ Conway, $600 to $10,” said the money taker, and lie 
had no sooner finished the words than the instrument 
began to click. 

“ They’re off at St. Loo ! ” sang out the operator. 
“ Rushfield in the lead, Cathedral second.” Pause. 
“ Cathedral at the quarter by two lengths, Rushfield’s 
second.” Pause. “ Cathedral at the half by three lengths, 


TAKING CHANCES. 


149 


Rushfield second. ,, Pause. “ Cathedral at the three- 
quarters by a length, Rushfield second.” Pause. “ Ca- 
thedral in the stretch by a neck, Rushfield’s second by a 
neck.” Longer pause. “ Jim Conway wins, easy, by 
three lengths ! ” 

“ Whoopee-wow ! ” The yell went up from the long- 
shot players in the room who had taken a chance on Jim 
Conway. 

The junior partner stood around with a broad grin on 
his face while he waited for the race to be confirmed. 
Then he collected, bounded downstairs, hailed another 
cab, and in exactly seventeen minutes from the time he 
had left his office he was back there again. He was 
greeted with the same frigidity as characterized his orig- 
inal welcome. He still wore his broad grin, and he 
walked over to his desk, raised the lid, and began to dig 
into his pockets. He produced first one fat roll of bills 
and then another, and he slammed each roll down on his 
desk as if it were so much shavings. His wife and his 
wife’s mother and his senior partner watched his per- 
formance with open mouths, as did the office boy who 
stood in the doorway. When the junior partner had 
made a pyramid of bills on his desk about as big as a 
fair-sized derby hat, he turned to his wife and asked her, 
still grinning: 

“Did you read this telegram, my dear?” holding the 
message out in his hand. 

“ I certainly did,” she replied, “ and you would oblige 
me greatly if you would” 

“ And who do you think this Jim Conway was, Patsy? ” 
he interrupted. 

“ I hadn’t the least idea in life,” she replied, without 
any sign of relenting, “ nor have I at the present mo- 


50 


TAKING CHANCES. 


ment. I intend, however, to find out who Mr. Conway is 
at the earliest possible mo” 

The junior partner fell into a revolving chair, stuck 
his legs out in front of him as far as they would reach, 
and roared so that he must have been heard all over the 
building. He roared so loud and long that the per- 
formance was infectious, and his wife and his wife’s 
mother and his senior partner, notwithstanding the fact 
had begun to dawn upon them that they were in a fool- 
ish position, had to smile in spite of themselves. When 
the junior partner was able to splutter he managed to 
gasp his explanation in short sentences. Bub was a 
friend of his in St. Louis who followed the races out 
there, and who had promised to tip him off on the first 
good thing at a long price that was to be put over the 
plate at the St. Louis meeting. Bub had kept his prom- 
ise, and the junior partner was $600 to the good. That 
was all. 

“ And if you don’t go out and corner the foulard dress 
goods market to-morrow, Patsy,” the junior partner con- 
cluded, addressing his wife, “ on the strength of what 
our four-footed pal, Jim Conway, has done for us, 
why” 

When they had gone, the office boy, in sweeping out 
the office, picked up the telegram, that had slipped to 
the floor while the junior partner was laughing. 

“ Now, w’y couldn’t I ha’ got a piece o’ dat ! ” said the 
office boy, disgustedly as he read the telegram. “ I bin 
pickin’ dat skate ev’ry day f’r de las’ two weeks, and I 
knowed dis mornin’ w’en I seen de St. Loo entries ffat 
he’d win in buck-jump.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


IS! 


STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND. 


A Game in New Orleans That Makes Modern “Big” 
Poker Games Seem Tiny by Comparison. 

“The shrinkage in the value of poker winnings that 
get talked about nowadays,” said the New Orleans turf- 
man at the beach dinner, “ is mournful, that’s what it 
is. A few days ago a man told me that So-and-so, a 
gilded youth from up the State somewhere, had recently 
swooped down upon a gentleman’s poker club in New” 
York, and had removed himself from the scene of play, 
after a five-hour seance, with $8500 in winnings. The 
man who told me this leaned back, after he had sprung 
the $8500 climax, and waited for my eyes to protrude. 
He looked a bit miffed and sulky when they didn’t pro- 
trude. 

“ * Why, durn it all/ said he, ' I believe you affect your 
cold-blooded way of taking things. To see you twiddle 
your thumbs a man ’ud suppose that you had no more 
sense than to imagine that an $8500 winning at a short 
poker sitting was the most ordinary thing in the’ 

“ ‘ Easy, easy,’ I had to put in, for he was heating 
himself unduly. Then, to bring him around to good nature 
again and to convince him that I wasn’t attitudinizing, 
I was compelled to spend a half hour or so in unwinding 
a bit of a reel of the days when there were poker giants 
in this country. He wasn^t quite willing, at the finish, 
to acknowledge that the winner at draw of $8500 was a 
poker pigmy, but when I happened to mention the oc- 
casion when Phil Cuthbert of St. James’s parish dropped, 


TAKING CHANCES. 


154 

in a two-handed game at the St. Charles Hotel in New 
Orleans, a little bundle of $400,000” 

“ He told you, of course, that you were smoking,” in- 
terrupted the New York man. 

“ No, he didn’t. He asked me if it got into the New 
Orleans papers. I told him that in 1868 the New Orleans 
papers were too busy roasting the carpet-baggers to de- 
vote any space to such a minor matter as a $400,000 
poker game at the St. Charles Hotel, where draw games 
approximating that in size were generally going on at 
any old hour of the day or night. There was some 
rhetoric, I admit, in that ‘ approximating ’ statement, but 
I wanted to set this New York man right. As a matter 
of fact, a $50,000 game of draw was not at all uncom- 
mon in the St. Charles’s private poker parlors. After 
Phil Cuthbert had dropped that mound of $400,000 on one 
hand, the New Orleans papers did announce that Mr. 
Philip Cuthbert, the well-known planter of St. James’s 
parish, was about to start on a gold-prospecting tour 
in the mountains of Honduras; but they were generous 
enough not to mention, if they knew it, that, with four 
aces in his hand, he had lost $400,000 to Mr. Joseph 
Lescolette, shipper, of Havre, Pernambuco, and New 
Orleans.” 

“ Lost $400,000 on a hand consisting of four aces, am 
I to understand you said? ” asked the New York man. 

“ The statement was to that general effect,” replied the 
New Orleans turfman. 

“ Suppose you just lead up to that gradually by tell- 
ing the story.” 

“ Well, in order to do that, I’ve got to plead guilty to 
having been a table arranger and sweep-out boy at the 
St. Charles at the time the thing happened,” said the 
horseman from New Orleans. “ However, having 


TAKING CHANCES. 


153 


achieved greatness since, I see no reason why I shouldn’t 
be willing to acknowledge that. Besides being table ar- 
ranger and sweep-out boy, it was one of the functions 
of my job at the St. Charles to sort o’ stand by, as sailor- 
men say, when games were on in the private parlors, 
and run errands for the gentlemen playing. There 
was plenty of high poker play to be had at any of 
the first-rate New Orleans clubs at that time — too much 
of it, in fact, for the club games became so open, owing 
to the too generous distribution of visitors’ cards by the. 
club members that many of the high-playing men of the 
town abandoned club poker playing altogether. When 
they felt the hunch to get into a game of draw they ad- 
journed to the St. Charles, where, in the seclusion of a 
private parlor, they enjoyed freedom from the neck- 
craning gaze of onlookers, and freedom also from that 
bane of the genuine lover of a game of draw, the chap 
who stands behind one’s chair and keeps up a running 
commentary of approval or disapproval. 

“ Phil Cuthbert was a raiser of perique tobacco up in 
St. James’s parish, and he had besides several thousand 
acres in cotton. His father, who died before the war 
was well under way, was supposed to be worth from 
$2,000,000 to $3,000,000, and it all went to his only son, 
Phil. At the close of the war the estate had dwindled to 
some $800,000, and Phil started in to flatten it out still 
more. It was the talk of Louisiana that he had taken 
a $250,000 crimp in the estate within two years after he 
had entered upon it, and it had nearly all gone at cards. 
He wasn’t a dissipated man at all, but he just naturally 
couldn’t help but play poker, and he belonged to a family 
of losers at poker. Before this big game that I’m going 
to tell you about wound him up I’d frequently seen him 
win as much as $25,000 in a single night’s play at the St, 


154 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Charles. Instead, though, of making a run for it for his 
St. James’s plantation when he made a winning like 
this, he’d be back again with a party of more or less 
solvent friends the very next night, and his winnings and 
an amount equal thereto that was not velvet, but hard, 
soil-wrung cash, would float out of his keeping into the 
hands of his friends. Wherefore, to insert a tiny bit of 
moralizing on the side, I want to say that your greatest 
gambler is not the man who possesses the greatest amount 
of skill in manipulating the cards, dice or wheel, but 
the man who knows to a T when the psychological mo- 
ment arrives for him to quit, winner or loser. 

“ Joe Lescolette — called Joe familiarly because he was 
under 40, a rounder of French nativity who loved Ameri- 
cans and their nicknames and diminutives of good fel- 
lowship — was probably the richest of the New Orleans 
fruit importers at that time. His father before him had 
had a line of South American and West Indian sailing 
packets hauling fruit into New Orleans for the American 
market, and Joe came into the whole business at the 
old gentleman’s death. To go a little ahead of the story, 
Joe went to France at the outbreak of the Franco-Prus- 
sian War in 1870, entered the French Army, and was 
killed at Gravelotte. He wasn’t a hectic flush gambler 
during the few years that he kept his name pretty con- 
stantly in the mouths of New Orleans folks on account 
of his extravagances, but he was a scientific master of 
the game of American draw, all the same, and, by the 
same token, as nervy a little man in a game of cards, 
or in any other affair of life, for the matter of that, as 
ever came out of Gaul. He was the original subsidizer 
of the French opera in New Orleans, by the way, and it 
was at a performance of ‘ Aida ’ that Joe met Phil Cuth- 
bert on the night Phil struck the poker snag that wrecked 


TAKING CHANCES. 


155 


his estate. The two men were friends of some years' 
standing, members of the same clubs, and they had had 
various business dealings with each other besides. On 
the night of the ‘ Aida ’ performance Cuthbert had just 
struck town from his St. James plantation and he had 
the poker light in his eye. Cuthbert met Joe Lescolette 
in the smoking-room of the opera house during the final 
intermission and slipped his arm through Lescolette’s 
and said: 

“ ‘ Joe, I desire to accumulate, accrue and win a very 
large portion of your currency, even unto half of your 
kingdom, this night. There is too much conversation in 
a game of four. Suppose, then, when the dying strains 
of Rhadames are only echoes and this act is finished we 
slit each other's weazens, pokerishly speaking, over at 
the hotel.' 

“ Well, when they came I was the buttons in charge 
of the parlor they selected for play. Much as they de- 
sired solitude, they couldn’t achieve it. About half a 
dozen of their friends traipsed along with them, and took 
one of the tables in the same parlor and went at a dinky 
game of $20 limit. 

“ I piled a couple of dozen of decks of cards within 
easy reach of Cuthbert and the Frenchman, and, after 
they had each taken two brandies and sodas apiece, talk- 
ing the while of everything else on earth besides poker, 
they began to play. Both of them had their check-books 
beside them on the table, and the bank was to keep itself, 
as the saying goes. There was to be no limit. New Or- 
leans men who, in those days, were poker players of the 
old time sort, didn’t ever play with a limit. None of 
them ever took advantage of this unwritten clause of the 
game to raise an opponent a million of dollars or so, and 
therefore out, but they played according to their means, 


156 


TAKING CHANCES. 


and if any of them was raised a bit too strong by a con- 
fident opponent he only had to let out a word to have 
the raise reduced. I don’t suppose more absolutely on- 
the-level poker was ever played in this country than the 
game as enjoyed by men of wealth in New Orleans after 
the close of the war. 

“ The white chips in this game between Lescolette and 
Cuthbert were worth $10, the reds $25, the blues $50, 
and the yellows $100. This was double the usual value 
of the chips even in big games at the St. Charles, and I 
could see that both men were out for it — in a perfectly 
friendly and cordial way, of course, but out for it never- 
theless. Lescolette was a scientific, cool, all-around, per- 
centage player of poker. He had made a study of the 
game just as he had made a study of the fruit trade, and 
he had very little of the mercurial disposition of his 
race. Withal, he was a generous man in the game, and 
never took advantage of an opponent’s overgrown con- 
fidence. Cuthbert was an uneven player, not a cool- 
headed man at all. He had no license to play cards for 
big stakes under any circumstances. In the first place, 
he drank too much over the game, and, in the second 
place, he tried to play poker by intuition instead of by 
mathematical calculation and the study of the other fel- 
low’s forehead. He knew poker thoroughly, of course, 
and he had flashes of genius at it, but in general, as I 
look back to his work now, I’d call his poker ragged, 
uneven, and unproductive. 

“ For all that, Cuthbert had Lescolette’s checks to the 
aggregate of nearly $13,000 after a couple of hours’ 
play. The friends of the two men at the other table 
knocked off to watch the play at the two-handed table. 
Lescolette, while he showed no nervousness, indicated by 
a somewhat deepened earnestness of manner that he didn’t 


TAKING CHANCES. 


157 


relish being $13,000 or anything like it in the hole. After 
he had dashed off the check that put him that amount 
out, he sent me to the cafe for a lunch, and the two men 
and their friends spent an hour or so over the salads and 
wines. 

We’ll resume, then?’ said Lescolette, and they be- 
gan play again. It was about 1 o’clock in the morning. 
Cuthbert had taken three pints of wine to wash down his 
luncheon, and then a rather heavy swig of cognac. When 
they resumed there was too much color in his cheeks for 
a successful poker player. Lescolette had drunk only 
Apollinaris. 

“ Cuthbert split open a new deck when play was re- 
sumed, and riffled them rather uncertainly. 

“ ‘ Damn a new deck of machine-burnished cards,’ said 
he. 4 Joe, you limber them up and deal this hand.’ 

Lescolette took the deck and riffled them for fully two 
minutes. Then he spread them out all over the table, 
tossed them about every which way for a bit, straightened 
them together in a bunch, riffled them again, and passing 
them over to Cuthbert for the cut, dished them out. 

“ Cuthbert was one of those poker players who pick 
up their cards one by one. It is terribly bad form, that, 
but Cuthbert, with his nervous disposition, was addicted 
to it. He picked up his first card this time and said, 
* Ah, a good beginning.’ When he looked at his second 
card, said he, ‘ Better yet.’ He made no comment upon 
his third card, but he flushed and gave a start that was 
perceptible to every man in the room save Lescolette, 
who was scanning his own hand. His fourth card took 
the flush out of his cheeks and steadied him. He went 
pale when he looked at it. He forgot to pick up his fifth 
card until Lescolette, looking up, remarked : ‘ Phil, are 
you strong enough to beat me with only four cards ? ’ 


i5» 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Then Cuthbert picked up his fifth card mechanically. 
It was a bad break, his leaving his fifth card untouched 
until reminded of it. It announced, simply, that he 
had pat fours. But he didn’t seem to think of this. 

u Cuthbert’s $50 anteing chip was in the middle of 
the table. Lescolette looked at it for a second, and seemed 
to be in more than one mind about playing or making 
it a jack pot. He decided to play, and joggled in his blue 
chip. 

“ ‘ Suppose,’ said Cuthbert, still pale but steady, * we 
make it $100 more to play, Joe?’ 

“ ‘ Of course,’ said Lescolette, and he shoved in a yel- 
low chip to match Cuthbert’s. 

“ ‘ How many ? ’ asked Lescolette, ready to dish out 
cards. 

“ ‘ None/ said Cuthbert^ who looked queer and un- 
natural with his white countenance and glowing eyes. 

“ ‘ So strong as that on the go-in ? ’ said Lescolette, 
elevating his eyebrows. ‘ You have me seined. I re- 
quire a card.’ And he served himself with it. 

“ I pretended to have a bit of business to attend to 
behind Cuthbert’s chair, so I could glance at his hand. 
He had four aces. I couldn’t get behind Lescolette’s 
chair, for three of the players’ friends were seated be- 
hind him. Lescolette didn’t make any sign either of ela- 
tion or disappointment when he looked at the card he 
had drawn. He looked up for a bet, for it was up to 
Cuthbert. 

“ ‘ A thousand dollars, make it, Joe,’ said Cuthbert. 

“ ‘ Oh, I’m not in so deeply that I can’t pull out of this 
pot,’ said Lescolette good-naturedly. ‘ However, seeing 
it’s you, your thousand is sighted, and it’s $5000 more.’ 

“ This was precisely what Cuthbert wanted. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


159 


“ ‘ Now you’re racing/ said he. ‘ Ten thousand more, 
Joseph Marie.’ 

“ Lescolette looked up at Cuthbert suddenly. 

“ * I say, Cuthbert,’ said he, 4 isn’t this a bit tumultu- 
ous and headlong, as it were ? ’ 

“ ‘ I don’t see why you should consider it so, Joe,’ re- 
plied Cuthbert. ‘ I’m playing according to the value of 

my hand. However, if it seems to strong, why ’ 

No, no, no,’ put in Lescolette, quickly. * I can stand 
it, and I do not seek to have you lower any of your raises. 
I simply was considering my own almost invincible 
strength herein.’ 

“ ‘ I stood pat, and you drew a card, you know,’ said 
Cuthbert. ‘ I rarely bluff. You are to regard me as a 
bit of an Atlas in this likewise. You see the $10,000 
raise ? ’ 

“ ‘Surely,’ said Lescolette, ‘ and elevate it another 
notch of $10,000. Will one of you gentlemen ’ — ad- 
dressing the somewhat wrought-up group of lookers-on 
— ‘ keep track of this with a bit of a pencil ? ’ 

“ One of the men in the group got out a note-book 
and stood by to register the bets. 

“ ‘ Having emerged from the narrow domain of chance 
into the field of uncertainty,’ said Cuthbert, * I fear me 
I’ll have to make it still another $10,000, Joe.’ 

“ Lescolette, the more common-sense man of the two, 
rested his hands on the table before him and reflected. 

“ ‘ I don’t think I want any more of this, Cuthbert,’ he 
said. ‘ There is now a great deal of money in the pot. 
It would be idle for either one of us to say that we 
could easily afford to lose our respective share in the 
pot as it stands. And yet, I don’t exactly feel like call- 
ing you. I’m too well fixed. I haven’t had such a hand 
at poker since ’ 


i6o 


TAKING CHANCES. 


44 4 That being the case,’ said Cuthbert, interrupting, 
4 why not be a sportsman and play your string?’ 

44 That remark nettled Lescolette just enough to hold 
him in indefinitely. There was no more talk on his part. 

44 4 Ten thousand more than you/ he said, short and 
sharp. 

44 Then the friends of the two men began to mutter. 

44 4 This is all very fine as an exhibition of gameness/ 
they said, collectively, 4 but there is a stopping point, or 
should be.’ 

44 When there was nearly $275,000 in the pot both 
Cuthbert and Lescolette pulled out their notebooks and 
began to run over their bank accounts. Both found 
that they had about tapped their supply of ready banked 
cash. They wrote checks, payable to each other’s order, 
for their respective shares of the amount in the pot, and 
then Cuthbert said : 

44 4 Joe, I can’t let down in this. I could never quite 
forgive myself if I did. Appraise my St. James land.’ 

44 Lescolette protested. He had often visited Cuthbert 
at his beautiful St. James place. He protested hard. Yet 
he wouldn’t call. 

44 4 Appraise the St. James land, Joe,’ said Cuthbert 
again. Lescolette declined to do it, and Cuthbert appealed 
to one of his friends to do it. 

44 4 1 should say your St. James plantations are worth 
close to $250,000,’ said this gentleman, unwillingly. 

44 4 Very well,’ said Cuthbert. 4 Shall I say, Joe, that 
those three squares of yours on Canal street are worth 
the same amount ? ’ 

44 Lescolette nodded gravely. 

44 4 Rather more than they’re worth, I should say,’ he 
remarked. 

44 4 Well, they’ll serve. I approximate their value/ 


TAKING CHANCES. 


161 

said Cuthbert, the flush back in his face again and his 
eyes burning like coals. ‘ It is now my bet, is it not? 
Joseph Marie, my St. James plantations, at their ap- 
praised value of $250,000, against these, your Canal 
street property, if you elect — and we’ll show down.’ 

“ Lescolette nodded. 

Old man,’ said Cuthbert, then, ‘ you don’t think 
I play it low down upon you? I couldn’t throw them 
away, you fully understand ? Joe, I’ve got four aces ! ’ 
“ ‘ Truly?’ said Lescolette, inquiringly and quietly. 
‘ Put them down, that we may see.’ 

“ Cuthbert, confident then that he was the winner, ner- 
vously placed his hand face up on the table. Lescolette 
threw down, then, amid a very intense silence, the deuce 
of hearts, face up. Next, he threw by the side of the 
deuce the trey of hearts. Then the four of hearts. Then 
the five of hearts. He halted then for a second. 
Cuthbert was as haggard looking a man as I ever saw. 
Lescolette threw down the six of hearts. 

“ Cuthbert simply said, ‘ All right, Joe,’ walked over to 
the sideboard, poured out a whopping big tumblerful 
of brandy, gulped it down, and, with a murmured 
‘Good morning’ (it was dawn) he walked unsteadily 
out. That afternoon he made his St. James plantations 
over to Lescolette, notwithstanding the latter’s protests. 
He had about $20,000 out of the wreck of his estate. He 
went to Honduras on a prospecting tour, found gold, 
and died in a Tegucigalpa hut of the fever.” 


1 62 


TAKING CHANCES. 


GREAT LUCK AT AN INOPPORTUNE TIME. 


A Poker Game in Abilene, When Abilene Was Bad, in 
Which a Tenderfoot Came Near Crossing the “Di- 
vide.” 


“ I had so much luck in a poker game I once sat into 
that Eve never played draw since/’ said a civil engineer 
who helped to build several of the railroads west of the 
Missouri. “ It happened in Abilene in the summer of 
’70. We had then pushed the road about eight miles to 
the west of Abilene. You know what Abilene was in 
’70. Dodge City was then a camp-meeting grove com- 
pared with Abilene. The men belonging to our construc- 
tion gangs were a bad enough lot to make it worth any 
man’s while to go light on them, but they were cooing 
doves alongside of the batch of evil devils who had thrown 
the town of Abilene together in anticipation of the build- 
ing of the railroad. Before we got anywhere near Abi- 
lene there was a pretty fair-sized and comfortably-filled 
cemetery plotted out near the town. But when we got 
close enough to Abilene to make it practicable for our 
construction men to put in their spare time there, drink- 
ing ‘ sumac ’ whisky and playing cards, between knock- 
off on Saturday afternoon and jump-in on Monday morn- 
ing, Joe Geddes, the pine-box undertaker of Abilene, had 
more business than he could handle, working night and 
day. 

“ From the time that we got ten miles this side of Abi- 
lene until the rails were set twenty miles the other side of 


TAKING CHANCES. 


163 


it, we lost construction men so fast that the road’s employ- 
ing agents in Leavenworth and Kansas City had trouble 
in filling their places. Every Monday morning there 
was a round-up of the dead and wounded in the white- 
washed calaboose and hospital in Abilene that reminded 
the ex-soldier surveyors who were with me of their war 
experiences. The construction men got the worst of it, 
of course. While they were game enough men, their 
weapons were their fists, their knives, and sometimes their 
picks. But they were not up to the science of fine gun 
work, whereas the Abileneites, composed chiefly of left- 
over cowboys from the great Texas cattle-trail, whisky- 
dishers from the slumped Colorado mining camps, and 
tin-horners and desperadoes from everywhere, all knew 
how to pump lead like lathers spitting nails. 

“ Although a pretty young man at that time, I was in 
charge of the surveyors’ gang. Most of the men in my 
gang were experienced, taciturn chaps. The experi- 
ences they had picked up in bad towns along other West- 
ern lines they had helped to map out had taught them 
the sense of steering clear of such towns and of sticking 
to their tents. I don’t suppose that a man of my gang 
walked through the streets of Abilene when we brought 
the road there — not because they were in any sense cow- 
ardly, but because they had learned in the course of 
years of frontiering that trouble, and a whole lot of it, 
often overtakes men who are least in search of it in towns 
like Abilene. 

“ These old-timers tried to talk me out of my deter- 
mination to have a look around in the town where so 
many of the men of the construction gangs were being 
killed off— for I wanted to see what thorough out-and- 
out bad men looked like. They told me that if I ever 
wanted to see my folks back East any more I’d better 


TAKING CHANCES. 


164 

not do any monkeying around in Abilene. But I knew it 
all in those days, and so, without letting any of the men 
in my gang know anything about it, I slipped over to the 
chainmen’s tents one night and roped in a couple of 
them to handcar me down to Abilene. When we reached 
the town I sent the chainmen back with the handcar, 
telling them to return for me in the morning. 

“ Abilene rather surprised me at first. I at least ex- 
pected to have my hat shot off a few times in the course 
of an hour’s rambling around, and, in fact, I was pre- 
pared to do a little impromptu dancing for the edifica- 
tion of Abileneites, who enjoyed toying with stran- 
gers. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the fel- 
lows hanging around the whisky mills and the brace 
faro layouts good-naturedly took me in hand and started 
in to give me a good time. I was a breezy young chap, 
you see, and able to hold my own in any public exhibi- 
tion of the swelled head I unquestionably possesed at 
that time. Anyhow, things had not thoroughly warmed 
up for the night when I fell in with the gang early in 
the evening. It all looked so smooth and easy, and the 
heavy-artilleried chaps that I ran into seemed so square 
and peaceable that I drank a good deal more sagebrush 
whisky than I had any right to drink or than I had ever 
drank before. 

“ Around about midnight five of us, including Jim 
Cathcart, a bad man who was hanged a few years later 
for the murder of a Sheriff in Texas, pulled up at Toole 
Kingsley’s ‘ Kansas or Bust ’ saloon and faro bank. The 
three other fellows I was with were outlawed cowboys, 
although I didn’t know it then, and even if I had it 
wouldn’t have made any difference in the shape I was in. 
Cathcart suggested a game of draw. He had probably 
noticed my good-sized wad of money, and I guess he 


TAKING CHANCES. 


165 

reckoned on getting it. I didn’t have any more sense 
than to agree, and, the other three chaps being willing, 
of course, we went up to the second floor of Kingsley’s 
rum and faro honkatonk and waded in. When Cath- 
cart suggested the game I noticed that a tall, broad- 
shouldered, very muscular-looking man, with long hair 
and a heavy mustache, who was standing with his back 
to the bar, eyed us pretty carefully, and at the time I 
rather wondered what he meant by it, though I forgot 
all about him five minutes later in the intensity of the 
game. 

“ ‘ Intense 9 is not the word to describe that game of 
poker. I had been plugging along at the game of draw 
more or less ever since I was a growing lad, and after 
I had begun to shoulder an azimuth I had been an on- 
looker at some mighty queer games. But I never saw 
cards run the way they did that night. I was just about 
a fair to middling poker player; certainly nothing extra, 
although I was deft of hand and knew how to rifflle cards 
in a way to bluff fellows not acquainted with my com- 
parative inferiority as a poker player into the belief that 
I was some pumpkins with the pasteboards. But, sec- 
ond-rate player as I was, and something over two parts 
loaded as I was, besides, in common with my four fel- 
low-players, the luck that I had from the very beginning 
of the game was positively miraculous. None of the 
other men had a half-skilletful of luck. It all came my 
way. It was embarrassing for a while, but later on 
it became dangerous ; for I was a total stranger to these 
four men and a good deal oilier in manners and speech 
than they — a thing that was likely to excite suspicion 
in towns like Abilene in those days, especially in the 
minds of men steadily losing in a game of draw. 

“ Every man of the four persisted in giving me such 


TAKING CHANCES. 


1 66 

massive hands to play against the utterly no-account 
hands they dished out to themselves that I didn’t know 
what to make of it. All four of them were reasonably 
good poker players, but they were none of them short- 
carders — able to stack a deck; and I had certainly never 
sat into a squarer game of draw. But my own luck was 
absolutely magical. P'at hands were given to me about 
as often as pairs were served out to the other fellows. 
Every time this happened, and one or more of my oppo- 
nents determined to find out if I was bluffing on my 
pats, I laid down the hands with a little fear growing 
within me; for after we had been playing for an hour 
or so I noticed all four of ’em snatching glances at me 
out of the tails of their eyes. 

“ After I had continued whacking all four of them 
pretty hard on their own deals (rarely dealing myself a 
hand worth anything) for a couple of hours, the luck took 
a peculiar switch, although it stayed with me. I began 
to get nothing whatever on the deals of the other fel- 
lows, but on my own deals I fed myself hands that 
actually smelt of brimestone, they were so weird and 
inexplicable. One time I got four eights pat on my 
own deal. I drew a card to give the impression that I 
was either drawing to two pairs or bobbing to a straight 
or flush, and won a corking pot. I was given some bad 
looks for this. Ten minutes later, when it was my deal, 
I was kind enough to give myself a pat full, kings up 
on sevens, and, the whole four staying, I rapped them 
again with all my might, although the chill of fear was 
creeping over, in spite of the copious quantities of fiery 
red liquor I was getting outside of along with the others. 
Once the luck veered around this way, it seemed as if I 
never got as much as ten high when the other fellows 
dealt. So the only thing I could do was to drop my 


TAKING CHANCES. 


167 


hands and stay out on their deals. They were quick 
to notice this, and it didn’t improve my situation any, 
either. 

“ This extraordinary luck jumped me on my own deal 
only once after I had caught and played those two self- 
dealt pat hands for all they were worth. The result was 
that I was out of the game for quite a little while, none 
of the other men serving me with hands fit to draw to. 
Meanwhile the four of them played listlessly with me 
out of it, for I had a good deal of the money of each, and 
they wanted it back. I think all four of them had fully 
decided in their own minds by this time that I was 
crooked and were only waiting for a chance to nail me. 

“ I had the buck when it came my turn to deal again, 
and so it was a jackpot. I was wishing myself well out 
of it, and had cold feet, if ever a man did, though I was 
afraid to say so with so much of my opponents’ money in 
my clothes. My hands probably trembled a little as I 
dealt that round, and even this fact probably caused them 
to suspect that I was monkeying with the deck and to 
watch me narrowly. The man on my left opened the pot 
for the size of it, and all stayed. When I picked up my 
hand and saw that I had given myself a clean, pat flush, 
ace on top, it made me pretty nervous, and before I stayed 
I did a heap of considering. 

“ ‘ The best thing you can do, young fellow,’ said I to 
myself, ‘ is to stay out of this jack altogether, or else 
throw that straight of yours face up in the center of the 
table, proving your squareness to these cutthroats, and 
let them play the jack out among themselves. If you 
don’t do one of these things, you’re going to get hurt in 
just about three minutes.’ 

“ Then I considered some more. Here I had a fine and 
probably winning hand that I had come by perfectly on 


TAKING CHANCES. 


1 68 

the level, and it would be rank cowardice to throw it away, 
and mighty poor poker, besides. 

“ ‘ I’ll be damned if I do any such thing just to con- 
vince these chaps that I’m not a thief,’ was my final con- 
clusion; and with that I made it twice the size of the 
pot to draw cards. They all glowered I tell you what, 
but they all stayed, every one of ’em. They not 
only stayed, but they bet and raised each other like 
the devil, and forced me to out-raise all of their raises 
every time it came around to me. 

“ Jim Cathcart, whose beady eyes had been blazing ever 
since I doubled the value of the pot to draw cards, was 
as bad-looking a man as I want to see when, finally, the 
man at my left called my last big raise. There had prob- 
ably been some signals in knee-rubbing under the table, 
for the other two cowboys followed the lead of the first 
and called me in turn. When it got around to Cathcart 
he. slammed his bundle of greenbacks into the pile with 
an oath. 

“ ‘ Podner,’ said he, looking hard at me with his little 
red eyes, * some o’ your work here to-night has been so 
cut-an’-dried lookin’ as to excite a whole lot of doubt 
about your bein’ on the level ; an’ if you happen to have 
anythin’ in that fist o’ your’n this time that’ll top these 
here three aces o’ mine, then, by hell, you havin’ dealt this 
mess yourself, there won’t be no manner o’ question but 
that you’re a damned proper crook.’ 

“Was I scared? Well, the hand just fell out of my 
paw, face up on the table, I was so scared! I was so 
paralyzed with fear that I simply couldn’t move or say 
a word, and, what’s more, I’m not a particle ashamed to 
own up to it. When the cards fell out of my hand Cath- 
cart reached over and spread them out with his left hand. 

“'Well, by hell, you are a crook, ain’t you?’ he 


TAKING CHANCES. 


169 


snapped when he saw the value of the hand that beat his 
own good one, and as he spoke he whipped out the big 
gun on the right side of his belt. I was blind with terror, 
and when I heard the loud report of a gun I gave it all up 
and figured that I was already three-quarters of the way 
over the Big Divide. 

“ When I opened my eyes a second later I saw Cath- 
cart staring at the door, his right arm hanging limp at 
his side. His gun had fallen on the table without being 
discharged, and his left arm was in the air. So were the 
six arms of the other three men, and they also had their 
eyes glued on the door. I wheeled around to look that 
Way myself. Standing quietly under the lintel of the 
door, with his two big guns covering the five of us, was 
the tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired man I had no- 
ticed eyeing us before we started the game of poker. 
The man was Wild Bill, Abilene’s celebrated Marshal. 
The shot I had heard when I had given the whole thing 
up was from one of Wild Bill’s unerring guns. It had 
pinked Cathcart in the right shoulder just in the nick 
of time, causing the gun with which he had intended to 
shoot me to fall from his hand. 

“ ‘ Slope for your camp, son,’ said Wild Bill to me 
quietly, still covering the four men. Well, for all I 
know, he might be covering them yet. I do know, 
though, that I was out of that room like a cat out of a 
bag, and the way I cut for our camp, over the newly-laid 
ties, eight miles away, was a warning to grasshoppers. 

“ It was while I was making this little journey, hitting 
a high place only once in a while, that I came to the de- 
termination that for a man who could not fight shy of 
bull-head luck any better than I could, the game of draw 
poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for 
health and peace of mind ; and I haven’t departed from 
that determination down to the present moment of time,” 


170 


TAKING CHANCES. 


CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS. 


Some of the Crafty Dodges Resorted to by the Profes- 
sional Sharpers Who “ Work the Liners.” 


An Englishman who travels a good deal was gener- 
alizing at one of the clubs last night on the subject of 
the card sharpers who devote themselves exclusively to 
the ocean steamers. 

“ It’s a marvel to me,” he said, “ that the American 
steamship people, or the police, or somebody, can’t drive 
these sharpers off the American steamers. IPs noth- 
ing short of disgraceful. Must be something wrong 
somewhere. Can’t be collusion, I don’t suppose, or” 

“ Oh, come now, stow that, mate,” said an American 
who does a bit of traveling himself. “If they’re not 
worse, and more of them, on the English transatlantic 
steamers, I’ll turn British subject, take the Queen’s 
shilling, put on a red coat, and fight all the naked blacks 
from Dahomey to” 

“Humbug! We don’t fight naked blacks. We only 
subdue them, that’s all. Punitive expeditions, you know. 
But about these card sharpers on the American ships. 
Why, it’s simply barbarous, you know, to permit them to 
mingle with gentlemen as they do. And the worst of 
it is, the cads get themselves up like gentlemen, so how’s 
a man to know” 

“ Must have been hit yourself last trip over, old man,” 
put in the American. 

The Englishman got red and flustered, as Englishmen 


TAKING CHANCES. 


17I 

will when compelled to admit that the universe is not 
entirely an open book to them. 

“ Well, yes, I did,” he admitted gamely. “ Not very 
hard, though. I think twenty guineas would about cover 
it. But it wasn’t the money so much. It was the way 
the thing was done — positively beastly, I say. Man was 
introduced to me on sailing day on the other side by an 
American I know well. Good fellow, too. Man had 
been introduced to him by somebody else, and so on, so 
that it would take a Scotland Yard man to trace how he 
came to know and rob most of us coming across. Worst 
of it was, I myself presented the chap to any number of 
fellows I knew on the ship, and all of ’em got bit more 
or less, and all of ’em looked at me reproachfully when 
it came out after we landed that the chap was a sharper, 
just as I looked reproachfully at the man who” 

“ Sort of endless chain, wasn’t it ? ” put in the Ameri- 
can. 

“ Well, if you want to put it that way,” said the Eng- 
lishman. “ And worse still, the man got my guineas 
at my own game. If it had been poker, now, I wouldn’t 
have minded so much, for I never could master that queer 
game, and I don’t believe there’s anything in it, anyhow. 
But nap! Chap beat me clean at nap, that Eve been 
playing ever since I was at Harrow. Odd, too, that I 
beat him easily at first and had all the luck, and was 
probably fifty guineas ahead of him. Then suddenly the 
luck changed, you see” 

The American smiled. 

“What the deuce are you grinning at? The luck 
changed, as I say, and, by Jove, the fellow positively 
couldn’t lose. If my daughter hadn’t become ill on the 
fourth day out, I dare say I might have lost quite a bit 
of money, and” 


172 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Unquestionably you would have,” put in the Amer- 
ican. “ So that in one respect your daughter’s illness — 
which I trust was not serious — was really a blessing to 
you. It’s queer to me that no Englishman I have ever 
met in ocean voyaging is able to perceive that when he 
is playing at cards with a stranger who permits him to 
win easily and heavily at first, it is time for him to make 
his devoirs, more or less respectful, to the stranger, and 
proceed to take a constitutional on the main deck, hence- 
forth abjuring cards with said stranger. Now, an 
American is able to see into that game right away. If 
he is playing with a friend, and the friend is a win- 
ner from the go-off, as we say over here, all well and 
good. The American voyager who is up to snuff puts 
his friend’s initial winnings down to the chances of the 
game. But when he gets into a game with a stranger, 
and the stranger simply shoves money from the out- 
set over to his side of the table — well, do you know what 
the American of to-day does under those circumstances? 
He simply awaits the moment when the luck begins to 
change, and then he has an imperative appointment with 
his wife in the cabin. He thus picks up quite a bit of 
cigar money from a man who he instinctively knows is 
a sharper.” 

“ Fancy now,” said the Englishman. “ If I had only 
known that” 

“ But you didn’t know, and, as I say, I never came 
across the Englishman who did. Why, the ocean voy- 
aging card sharpers have become so well aware of this 
little shrewd habit of American passengers with whom 
they sit down to a game that of late years they have al- 
together abandoned that old, old trick of permitting their 
victims to win with ease at the outset. They only work 
that trick nowadays on Englishmen. Fact is, I think 


TAKING CHANCES. 


73 


there ought to be a rule on all transatlantic steamships, 
English and American, absolutely prohibiting British 
subjects from playing cards at all aboard ship.” 

“ Tommyrot ! ” said the Englishman. 

“ Not so much so as you might imagine,” said the 
American. “ Of course, I don’t mean that literally, and 
yet I don’t know but what, after all, it might be a good 
thing. I have watched the wake of a steamer on the trip 
across the Atlantic fifty-two times — that is, I have made 
twenty-six round voyages — and I suppose that on these 
voyages I have seen as many as a thousand men plucked 
at cards. I will venture to assert that 80 per cent, of 
them were Englishmen. So you will perceive there is 
some justification for what I said about your countrymen 
playing cards aboard ship. 

“ I’ve seen some clever men of your country badly done 
by the ocean-going card sharpers, too. At the time your 
Lord Lonsdale came to the United States — Violet Cam- 
eron incident, you know — he was a pretty young man, 
even if he did at that period of his life stand in urgent 
need of a guardian with a heavy club. Well, amid the 
newspaper uproar over his landing in this country with 
the Cameron, the fact did not come out that Lonsdale 
was plucked of $12,000 on the trip over by Ned Turner, 
one of the most notable of the older clique of steam- 
ship sharpers. But it’s a fact, all the same. I was not 
only a board the steamer at the time, but I was one of 
a number of men who endeavored to pound some sense 
into young Lonsdale’s head while the plucking was going 
on. But he was a stubborn chap and would listen to no 
one, and even when he was quite convinced that Turner 
was a sharper, at the end of the voyage he stood for his 
big loss like a little man, and became genuinely angry 
at some of his English friends aboard who recommended 


174 


TAKING CHANCES. 


him to stop payment on the checks he had given Turner 
to cover the greater portion of the plucking. 

“ I think Turner had it in mind to do Lonsdale when 
he got aboard at Liverpool. Turner had been working 
the ships for fifteen years, in spite of the efforts of the 
steamship companies to keep him off their vessels, and at 
this time he was a man of 40 or thereabouts. Lonsdale 
was pretty liberal in the use of wine at this time, and 
it was at the buffet that Turner, who was a fine-looking 
insinuating and accomplished man, found young Lons- 
dale on sailing day. The two men struck up a friendship 
from the very first day of the voyage, and it was Lons- 
dale himself who first suggested, as he afterward 
acknowledged — for he was a manly fellow — the poker 
game. Lonsdale had only recently learned the hands in 
poker — which is about all any man ever learns about it, 
if the truth were told — and he had the poker initiate’s en- 
thusiasm for the game to an exaggerated extent. Before 
going any further, I ought to say that Turner always 
maintained afterward that in his play with Lonsdale he 
was perfectly on the level. 

“ ‘ The young fellow insisted on playing,’ said Turner, 
‘ and he couldn’t play any more than my aunt in Connecti- 
cut. I played with him, because that’s my business. But 
I didn’t have to play crooked — and I don’t admit that I 
ever did play crooked, understand — to get his $12,000.’ 

“ Well, at any rate young Lonsdale and Turner started 
the game on the first day out, and kept it going almost un- 
til the steamer passed Fire Island. Of course Turner beat 
him right along. He made no effort to let Lonsdale win 
from him at first. He simply played poker and raked in 
the young man’s money and checks. A lot of us aboard 
knew Turner, and those of us who had met Lonsdale 
in England got him aside on the second day out and 


TAKING CHANCES. 


175 


diplomatically put it to him that he was engaged in a pret- 
ty difficult encounter — that, in brief, Turner was a pro- 
fessional player of cards. For our pains we were told 
that we were too confoundedly officious, that he was 
more than 7 years of age and knew what he was about, 
and all the rest — you know the talk of a boy; and this 
boy was flushed, too, you understand. 

“ At any rate, when the steamer was drawing near 
this shore Lonsdale decided that he had had enough — not 
that he would not have gone on playing for another seven 
days, had the voyage been protracted to that extent, but 
he had to get ready to land. Several of us were in the 
card-room when the last hand was played. Turner won 
the hand and Lonsdale scribbled a check on his American 
banker for the amount the hand represented. Then he 
looked up at Turner for a minute and said: 

“ ‘ Some of my friends here estimate you a little un- 
kindly, Mr. Turner/ 

“‘How’s that?’ inquired Turner, looking not a whit 
surprised. 

“ ‘ Well,’ said Lonsdale, ‘ they maintain that your skill 
at cards affords you something better than a livelihood.’ 

“ ‘ I never denied that,’ said Turner coolly. 

“ ‘ In playing with me on this voyage you have em- 
ployed skill alone ? ’ 

“ ‘ At your suggestion, I have played draw poker with 
you for seven days. I understand draw poker, and I 
have $12,000 of your money. Do you want it back? ’ 

“ You see, that was a magnificent bluff on Turner’s 
part. The young chap, he knew, would not welch. 

“ ‘ Oh, if you choose to be insulting’ said Lons- 

dale, flushing hotly, and he rose from the card-table and 
left the room. 

“ Well, a couple of elderly Englishmen aboard who 


176 


TAKING CHANCES. 


knew Lonsdale and his father before him went to him 
then and told him that it would be perfectly proper and 
right for him to stop payment on the checks he had given 
to Turner, who, they told him in so many words, was 
nothing short of a swindler. 

“ ‘ Mind your own damned business,’ said Lonsdale. 
‘ I’ll do nothing of the sort,’ and that was the end of it. 
It must be confessed that you folks over there have a 
wonderfully game fashion of sticking to a bad proposi- 
tion ; but I, for one, think it is pure vanity. Turner was 
kept off the ships of all the lines after that, and I don’t 
know what became of him. 

“ How they contrived to keep Turner off the ships un- 
less he really wished to remain off is something that I 
can’t explain, for it is simply a plain statement of fact 
to say that the steamship companies have always found, 
and probably always will find, it impossible to prevent 
the card sharpers from running on their boats. They 
have often tried it. They tried it on one notable occa- 
sion, as I remember, with George McGarrahan, in 1881. 
McGarrahan was the Nestor of the steamship card sharp- 
ers, and all the steamship companies knew him. The 
president of one of the most prominent transatlantic lines 
sent for McGarrahan — who, by the way, has since died 
in New York — and told him that he would not be per- 
mitted to travel henceforth on the vessels of the line. 

“ ‘ The deuce you say ! ’ replied McGarrahan. ‘ How 
are you going to stop me ? ’ 

“ ‘ Refuse to give you passage,’ answered the presi- 
dent. 

“‘You will, will you?’ said McGarrahan. ‘Well, if 
you do that, I’ll get enough damages out of your line to 
make it unnecessary for me ever to touch a card again 
as long as I live.’ 


TAKING CHANCES. 


1 77 


“ His position was correct in law, as the president of 
this line found out upon investigation. The steamship 
company, you understand, is not the regulator of the 
habits of its steamers’ passengers. If the passengers 
don t know any better than to play cards with sharpers, 
that is their own lookout. And a steamship company 
cannot decline to sell passage to a man because it claims 
he is a short-card player. It devolves upon the company 
to prove that the man is a card sharper, and the steamship 
people know that this is practically impossible, for no 
man who is done at cards by one of these men on an 
ocean steamship is going to rise in his seat and make an- 
nouncement of the fact to the world. 

“ Observation tells me that there are not nearly so 
many of these men on the ships now as formerly. The 
short-card players who make a business of traveling have 
found the trains much more profitable, since the officers 
of the steamers got into the habit of going quietly among 
the voyagers of a card-playing turn and warning them of 
the danger of getting into games with such and such 
men. That was the system, and a pretty effectual one, 
too, adopted by the steamship companies to squelch the 
ocean card sharpers. The result has been that the 
sharper can now only make a general campaign of all the 
big steamers — and the big steamers are the only steamers 
they consider worth working — before the officers know 
them, and then their game is dead practically. So that 
they find it more profitable to take to the swell trains on 
the swell runs, making the same trip rarely, and thus pre- 
venting their countenances from getting too familiar to 
the railroad people.” 

“ How the deuce do you know all this ? ” inquired the 
Englishman. 


178 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Well,” replied the American, “ you may be pretty cer- 
tain that I haven’t dreamed it. Besiues, I figured it that 
you required some consolation for the loss of your twenty 
guineas. Didn’t you ? ” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


179 


THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER. 


That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and 
the Dog's Owner Ought to Know. 


“ For a fox terrier, that dog don’t seem to know a 
whole lot,” said one of the men in the back room of an 
uptown cafe. 

The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in 
the lap of his master and wagging his stump of a tail 
foolishly. His mas-ter was a squat, thin-faced man of the 
all-aged class ; that is, he might have been anywhere from 
30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners 
of his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get- 
up he looked like ready money. He lapped the dog’s 
clipped ears one over the other and looked reminiscent. 

“ Well,” said he, replying to the other man’s remark, 
“ I can’t say that he does look dead wise and smooth to 
the naked eye. He’s not one of these here fresh sooner 
dogs that wants to put you next to all he knows the first 
clatter out o’ the box. He’s no trick mutt, anyhow. I 
raised him from a pup, and I never taught him any of 
the jay tricks that these pillow-raised, dog-cracker mutts 
go through. What he don’t know about standing up in 
a corner and hopping over a cane and speaking for grub 
and waltzing on his front feet and playing ’possum, and 
all that kind o’ dinky work, would fill a big book. But 
if any of you people think you can give him any points 
on the value of hands in a game of poker, then you need 
a new dope cook, and that’s which. ,, 


i8o 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Poker ? ” said another of the party, incredulously. 
“ Say, shoot it in light. Your yen-hook’s overworked.” 

“ That’s what I said — poker,” replied the fox terrier’s 
owner, firmly. “ I’m putting you next now, because I 
don’t make it a business to do pals in a poker game. He’s 
the best poker dog on the American continent, that mutt. 
Can’t begin to figure on how many times he’s won me 
out, and for how much. He’s sulked on me two or three 
times at critical junctures in games of draw, and given 
me the wrong tips, just to get square with me for some- 
thing or other, but that was when he was young and 
sassy and disposed to work his edge on me. He’s been 
tipping me off right now for seven straight years, and — 
well, I’ve got a dollar or two scattered around,” and the 
owner of the poker dog slowly pulled the tinfoil off a 
25-cent cigar. 

“ Didn’t have a bit o’ trouble teaching him the game, 
I suppose ? ” asked one of the men at the table. 

“ Well,” replied the fox terrier’s owner, striking a 
match on his diamond-incrusted match safe, “ I can’t say 
that teaching him the hands was altogether a snap. At 
first he used to get the kings and jacks mixed once in 
a while, and then he had a habit, when he was learning 
the game, of getting the eights and tens twisted, too. 
But I broke him of those defects after a while. It wasn’t 
so much trouble teaching him the value of the hands in 
poker as it was to fix up a sign manual by which he could 
express himself and tip me off on the hands held by the 
other fellows. But patience was my long suit in teaching 
that dog the g'ame of poker, and in less than a year after 
I showed him the first pack of cards he ever saw, he was 
able to put me onto the worth of every hand around a 
table without any of the marks falling to the scheme. His 
method of communicating such information to me during 


TAKING CHANCES. 


181 

the progress of a game is a bit involved and intricate, and 
we’ve got a lot of little code signs that would require too 
much elaboration in the explaining, but I’ll just give you 
a little idea of the way the thing works. 

“ Suppose I’m sitting in a four-handed game. The dog 
is nosing around the room, not in any ostentatious kind 
of way and not getting himself noticed at all by the other 
three in the game. A hand is dished out. The dog 
noiselessly rubbernecks behind the chair of the first player 
on his route. The first player, we’ll say, has got a pair 
of sevens, and I’ve got my eye on the dog. The dog 
quietly gapes twice, to indicate that player No. i has a 
pair, and then blinks both of his eyes seven times in 
rapid succession. See? Of course I know then that No. 
i has only got a pair of bum seven. I pretend to scan 
my hand, while the dog quietly gets behind the chair of 
player No. 2. We’ll say No. 2 has three queens. The 
dog passes his right paw over his right eye three times. 
If it’s three kings, left paw over his left eye three times. 
If it’s three bullets he puts his left paw at his nose and 
holds it there for a second, and, if three jacks, his right 
paw at his nose. Savvy? And so on. He’s got the 
whole manual and code worked out to a stretch finish. If 
No. 3 has got a pat flush he closes his left eye and keeps 
it closed until he sees I’m noticing him. If No. 3 has got 
a pat full house he shuts up his right eye in the same 
way. 

“ This, of course, is only preliminary and it only puts 
me next to what the marks around the table have got in 
their hands before the draw. If they’re too well fixed for 
me before the draw, of course I drop out of it there and 
then. But if I’ve got a pretty good fist full myself and 
am as good as any of ’em before the draw, why of course 
I draw to my hand. Just as quick as all the fellows that 


i 82 


TAKING CHANCES. 


stay in pick up the cards they’ve drawn the dog does his 
little act all over again and tips me off on those that have 
filled their hands. Makes the game dead easy, don’t it? 
If I wanted to play the scheme to its limit, which would 
be a fool trick and probably result in that dog getting 
himself stuffed and mounted by some loser getting next 
to his gag, I’d have too much money. But I never went 1 
into it too heavy. I’ve let good things take coin off me so 
fast that I almost got pneumonia, and me knowing all 
the time just what they had in their hands. The Chinese 
bluffs that some of ’em have put up, too ! Of course I’d 
only play off on ’em for a while, just long enough to 
make them look on me as something easy, and then me 
and the dog’d waltz in and chew their manes off close to 
the hide. 

“ Yes, siree, that dog’s been a sure enough meal ticket 
for me for a long while. But, as I told you a while 
back, he sulked on me two or three times and gave me 
the wrong steer when he was young and perky and hot 
over something or other, and I got hurt on these occa- 
sions, for a fact. Remember one of those times particu- 
larly. I’d been playing for several nights in succession 
with three young jays of real estate men out in Minne- 
apolis and letting ’em take slathers of it off me just to 
get them interested. All three of ’em had gobs of the 
green and I figured on making ’em all move out to Seattle 
or somewhere by the time me and the dog got through 
with them. The mutt was only a two-year-old then, but 
he was playing mighty fine poker, and these three Minne- 
apolis ducks looked like a fine clean-up. On the after- 
noon of the fourth night that we got together in 
the game I’d got hot over the mutt chewing one of my 
hats all to pieces — fox terriers are worse than goats for 
chewing things up — and I’d given him three or four good 


TAKING CHANCES. 


183 

raps over the side of the head. He didn’t like this a little 
bit — I could see that. He wouldn’t have much to do with 
me for the remainder of the afternoon and I couldn’t con 
him into becoming friendly again, either. He just 
looked at me out of the tail of his eye, as much as to 
say, I m going to throw you the first chance I get,’ but 
of course I couldn’t figure that he’d carry his sulkiness 
into the game of draw that night, when I intended to 
begin on my three good things and crimp up their wal- 
lets. 

“ That night I took the mutt with me, as usual, to the 
house of one of the good things, where we played. I 
couldn’t get the dog to be very chummy with me, though, 
even after spending a large part of the afternoon trying 
to soft soap him. The licking I had given him still 
rankled within him, but I figured that he would forget all 
about it in the excitement of the game after we got go- 
ing. I was more than ever confident that he was all 
right when he tipped me off right on the first dozen 
rounds of hands, during which I picked out most of the 
winnings. 

“ I dealt the thirteenth mess myself and when the two 
beyond the ante man declined to stay I made it a jack- 
pot, having the buck. I caught three aces and the pot 
looked nice for me, even without the mutt to joggle me 
along. The man after the dealer opened it, the jay next 
to him stayed and so did I, of course. The dealer stayed 
with a rush and it looked like a nice, neat jack to win — for 
it was a $100 limit game and all of the three good things 
thought they knew how to play poker. The dog tipped 
me off that the man who opened the pot had three fours, 
the chap next to him two pairs and the dealer a pair of 
kings. I drew to my hand, of course, and when the guy 
that opened the pot stood pat I said to myself, ‘ That’s a 


8 4 


TAKING CHANCES'. 


pretty cold bluff that duck’s making, standing pat on his 
three fours.’ The mutt’s tips told me, of course, that I 
had ’em all topped and I just lay back and listened to 
their bets, knocking heaps off my chip piles and raising 
’em right along with all the confidence in the world. 

“ I commenced to admire that pot-opener with the three 
fours who had stood pat for a bluff when he kept raising 
it the limit. Between us we raised the other two out after 
it had gone around a number of times, and then that 
geezer with the three fours sat back to bluff me out, as 
I thought. I wasn’t a bit worried by the cool, confident 
look on his mug, for I knew that that mutt of mine never 
made any mistakes, and I knew that I had him beat. 
When there was $3,800 in the pot I got to the end of my 
chips, and, as it was table stakes and we had arranged 
that no more chips could be bought during the playing 
of a hand, I called the pot opener, at the same time chuck- 
ing down my three bullets, and was fixing to haul in the 
pot. 

“ ‘ Hold on there a minute,’ said the man with the three 
fours — as I thought — when he saw me reaching for the 
pot, ‘ I’ve got a nice pat straight, from one to five,’ and 
he showed the cards up in their order on the table. 

“ ‘ The dust is yours,’ said I, choking back a lot of 
cuss words, and just then I looked behind the chair of 
the winner and caught the eye of that dog. If there 
wasn’t a gleam of triumph in his eye, damme ! He looked 
square back at me for ten straight seconds, as much as 
to say, * You didn’t think I’d dish you in the game, did 
you ? ’ and then he walked over in front of the fireplace, 
plunked himself down, and that was the finish of that 
four-handed game. I knew that I couldn’t get any good 
out of the dog for the rest of that night, and I did a sud- 
den watch-studying act, told the jays of a forgotten en- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


185 


gagement, and got out. I had expected to clean up about 
$10,000 out of those three jays, and durned if I didn’t 
quit more’n $2,000 loser on account of that dog, for I had 
only begun to win back what I had let them take away 
from me when the mutt turned me down. The mutt fol- 
lowed me back to the hotel with a sulky eye, as if he ex- 
pected to be clubbed for his little game of crooked steer- 
ing, but you can gamble that I cut out the clubbing so far 
as he was concerned for good. I had won him back 
inside of a week or so, and he never did me dirt on call- 
ing the turn after that. 

“ Me and the dog were covering Kansas City, St. Louis, 
Memphis, and that circuit about three years ago, taking 
it off easy ones in comfortable hunks, when I stacked 
up against a pretty wise one. It was in Knoxville, where 
I had got together a playing squad of three young ones 
that looked ripe for plucking. I got into ’em pretty fair- 
ly after a week’s work, and the mutt was in great form. 
One of the good things — the one that I got into the hole 
worse than any of the others — seemed to be taking a 
great interest in the mutt after he had been stacking up, 
a bad loser, against our game for ten days or so, but there 
wasn’t a pin-head of suspicion in his face. He just 
seemed to like to watch the dog’s rubber-necking antics, 
and one night, when he was dropping slathers of it to 
me, he studied the moves of the dog with unusual in- 
fentness. 

“ ‘ You ought to teach that poodle how to play draw,’ 
said he to me, and I was beginning to fear he was getting 
next. But he kept on looking as moon-faced and easy as 
usual and losing right along, though I couldn’t help no- 
ticing how carefully he watched the moves of the mutt. 

“ The next night, when we again sat down at the game, 
I again noticed that the young geezer had his eye on 


i86 


TAKING CHANCES. 


the dog’s moves behind the chairs. I also noticed that 
he generally stayed when I fell out after the draw, and 
that when he did stay, with me out, he very often took big 
hunks out of the other two young fellows. I couldn’t 
quite get next to this, the duck looked such a Rube. 
Finally a big jack came around, and I, only having eight 
high, kept out of it. One of the other young fellows 
opened the pot, the man next to him stayed, and the 
moon-faced Rube, who had been watching my dog so 
carefully, raised the both of ’em before the draw. It was 
a good, stiff raise he gave ’em, at that. They stood it 
and stayed in. They bet around for fifteen minutes, and 
then the slob who had been studying the mutt was called 
by both of them, and beat them both out with his queen 
full on sixes. I thought that was kind o’ queer, espe- 
cially in view of his earnest study of my poodle, and so 
I got cold feet in order to have a chance to think the 
thing over. Oddly enough, the moon-faced-looking dub 
got cold feet at the same time, and was out on the street 
with me a little while later. We had walked a block or 
so, chinning, when he gives me a dig in the slats, and 
says he, grinning: 

“ ‘ Great dog, that, of yours.’ 

“ I turned around and sized him up. 

“ ‘ Pretty fair mutt,’ said I. 

“ * Only thing about him is,’ went on this soft-looking 
guy that you wouldn’t think knew the difference between 
sand and slag, ‘ he wants to change his code. It took me 
a week to get next to it, but I had it safe to-night, all 
right. I’m only $2,000 ahead on the night’s play, which 
makes me $500 more than even. You want to teach the 
mutt new business before some other duck that looks 
as much like a dead one as I do comes along, tumbles to 
the dog’s wig-wag system, and does you out of a good 


TAKING CHANCES. 


187 


bundle. By the way/ he wound up, ‘ what kennel did 
that one come from? Where’s the rest of the litter? I’d 
like to have a brother of him.’ Queer how he got onto 
the game, wasn’t it ? ” 

“ Yes, very,” replied the man who had doubted the fox 
terrier’s possession of any intelligence. 


1 88 


TAKING CHANCES. 


WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER. 


One of the Players Hadn't Long to Live, Anyhow, and 
So He Took a Hand for a Final Deal. 


“ I haven't played any cards on railroad trains, even 
with friends, for the past seven years,” said Joe Pinck- 
ney, the Boston traveling man who sells bridges and 
trestles in every land, at a New York hotel the other night, 
“ and it’s more than certain that, for the remainder of my 
string, I shall never again sit into a train game, whether 
it’s old maid, casino, whist or draw — especially draw. I 
used to play cards most of the time when I was on the road 
just to relieve the monotony of traveling. I don’t recall 
that it ever cost me much, for I generally broke even and 
often a little ahead on a years’ play. I very rarely sat 
into a game in which all of the other players were strang- 
ers to me, especially when the game was draw or some- 
thing else at so much a corner, and so I never got done 
out of a cent. 

“ I know so many traveling men that a drummer friend 
of mine has an even money bet with me that I won’t be 
able to board a single train, anywhere in this country, for 
the space of a year, without my being greeted by some trav- 
eling chap with whom I am acquainted, and he wins up to 
date, though the bet was made more than eight months 
ago. So that, when I used to be in the habit of playing 
cards on the trains I always had some fellow or fellows on 
the other side of the table that I knew to be on the level. 
But I had an experience on a Western train seven years 


TAKING CHANCES. 


89 


ago that sort o' soured me on the train game; in fact, 
that experience knocked a good deal of the poker enthusi- 
asm out of me, and since then, whenever I’ve got into a 
game with friends or acquaintances in a hotel room, I’ve 
sized them up pretty carefully to see if they were all 
robust men. Maybe you don’t understand what possible 
connection there can be between physical robustness and 
the game of American draw just now, but you’ll under- 
stand it when I tell you of this experience. 

“ In the spring of 1891 I got aboard the night train 
of the ‘ Q,’ Chicago to Denver. The train left Chicago 
at 9 o’clock at that time. When I was seven years younger 
than I am now I never sought a sleeper bunk until 1 or 
2 in the morning, and when I found that there wasn’t 
a man on this sleeper with whom I had ever a bowing 
acquaintance I felt a bit lonesome. I started through the 
train to hunt up the candy butcher to get from him a 
bunch of traveling literature, and in the car ahead of 
me I found Tom Danforth, the Michigan stove man, an 
old traveling pal of mine. I sat down to have a talk with 
Tom when along came George Dunwoody, the Chicago 
perfumery man, who had also paralleled me a lot of times 
on trips. Inside of four minutes I had pulled both of 
’em back to my car and we had a game of cut-throat draw 
under way in the smoking compartment. We started in 
at quarter ante and dollar limit, but when I pulled ’way 
ahead of of both of them within an hour or so and they 
struck for dollar ante and five-dollar limit, I was agreeable. 

“We were plugging along at this game, all three of 
us going pretty slow, and both of them gradually getting 
back the money I had won in the smaller game, when a 
tall, very thin and very gaunt-looking young fellow of 
about thirty entered the smoking compartment and 
dropped into a seat with the air of a very tired man. I 


190 


TAKING CHANCES. 


sat facing the entrance to the compartment, and I thought 
when I saw the man’s emaciated condition and the two 
bright spots on his cheekbones, ‘ Old man, you’ve pretty 
nearly arrived at your finish, and if you’re making for 
Denver now I think you’re a bit too late.’ My two friends 
didn’t see the consumptive when he entered the room, 
for their backs were turned to the door, but when, while 
I was dealing the cards, the new arrival put his hand to 
his mouth and gave a couple of short, hacking coughs, 
Dunwoody turned around suddenly and looked at him. 

“ ‘ Why, hello there, Fatty,’ exclaimed Dunwoody, hold- 
ing out his hand to the emaciated man, ‘ where are you 
going? Denver? Why, I thought you were there long 
ago? Didn’t I tell you last fall to go there or to Ari- 
zona for the winter? D’ye mean to say that you’ve been 
in Chicago all winter with that half a lung and that bark 
o’ yours? How are you now, anyhow, Fat? ’ 

“ The emaciated man smiled the weary smile of the 
consumptive. 

“ ‘ Oh, I’m all right, George,’ he said, sort o’ hanging 
on to Dunwoody’s hand. ‘ Going out to Denver to croak 
this trip, I guess. Didn’t want to go, but my people got 
after me and they’re chasing me out there. I wanted 
them to let me stay in Chicago and make the finish there, 
but they wouldn’t stand for it. My mother and one of 
my sisters are coming along after me next week/ 

“'Finish? What are you giving us, Fatty?’ asked 
Dunwoody, good-naturedly, but not with a great amount 
of belief in his own words, I imagine. ‘ You’ll be selling 
terra cotta tiles when the rest of us’ll be wearing skull 
caps and cloth shoes. Cut out the finish talk. You look 
pretty husky, all right.’ 

“ ‘ Oh, I’m husky all right,’ said the consumptive, with 
another weary smile, and then he had another coughing 


TAKING CHANCES. 


191 

spell. When that was over Dunwoody introduced him 
to us. 

Ed, alias Fatty, Crowhurst,’ was Dunwoody’s way 
of introducing him. ‘ Sells tiles, waterworks pipes and 
conduits. Called Fatty because he’s nearly six and a 
half feet high, has never weighed more than thirty-seven 
pounds (give or take a few), and has never since any one 
knew him had more’n half a lung. Think’s he’s sick, and 
has laid himself on the shelf for over a year past. No 
sicker than I am. Used to have the record west of the 
Alleghanies for cigarette smoking. You’ve cut the ciga- 
rettes out, haven’t you, Fat?’ 

“ For reply the consumptive pulled out a gold cigarette 
case, extracted a cigarette therefrom and lit it. It was 
a queer thing to see a man in his state of health smoking 
a cigarette. Dunwoody’s eyes stuck out over it. 

“ ‘ Well, if you ain’t a case of perambulating, lingering 
suicide, Fatty, I never saw one,’ said he to his friend. 

“ 4 It’s all one,’ was the reply. ‘ It’s too much punish- 
ment to give ’em up, and it wouldn’t make any difference 
anyhow.’ 

“ I had meanwhile dished the hands out, and after my 
two friends had drawn cards and I made a small bet they 
threw up their hands. 

“ ‘ Draw, eh? ’ said the emaciated man, addressing Dun- 
woody. ‘ How about making it four-handed ? ’ 

“ ‘ Oh, you’d better take it out in sleeping, Fat,’ replied 
Dunwoody. ‘ You look just a bit tired, and we’re going 
to make a night of it, most likely, with whisky trimmings. 
You can’t do that very well without hurting yourself, and 
if you came in and we got into you you’d feel like playing 
until you evened up, and ’ud get no rest. Better not 
come in, Fat. Better hit your bunk for a long snooze. 


92 


TAKING CHANCES. 


We’ll have breakfast together when they hitch on the 
dining car at Council Bluffs.’ 

“ ‘ I haven’t sat into a game of draw for a long while,’ 
said Dunwoody’s friend, ‘ and I’d rather play than eat.’ 

“ There was a bit of pathos in that remark, I thought, 
and I kicked Dunwoody under the table. 

“ ‘ Well, jump in then, Fatty,’ said Dunwoody, and the 
poor chap drew a chair up to the table with a look of 
pleasure on his drawn, hollow face, with its two brightly 
burning spots on the cheekbones. 

“ It soon became apparent that Dunwoody’s fear about 
our ‘ getting into ’ the consumptive didn’t stand any show 
whatever of being realized. The emaciated man was an 
almighty good poker player, nervy, cool, and cautious, 
and yet a good bit audacious at that. I caught him four- 
flushing and bluffing on it several times, but he got my 
money right along in the general play, all the same, and 
after an hour’s play he had the whole three of us on the 
run. I was about $100 to the rear, and Dunwoody and 
Dan forth had each contributed a bit more than that to die 
consumptive’s stack of chips. The fact was, he simply 
outclassed the three of us as a poker player — and, by the 
way, I wonder why it is that men that have got some- 
thing the matter with their lungs are invariably such rat- 
tling good poker players? I’ve noticed this right along. 
I never yet sat into a poker game with a man that had 
consumption in one stage or another of it that he didn’t 
make me smoke a pipe for a spell. That would be a 
good one to spring on some medical sharp for an explana- 
tion. 

“ By the time midnight came around Dunwoody’s 
friend with the pulmonary trouble had won about half as 
much again from us, and Dunwoody began to look at his 
watch nervously. The three of us were taking a little 


TAKING CHANCES. 


193 


nip at frequent intervals, just enough to brush the cob- 
webs away, but the sick-looking man didn’t touch a drop. 
He smoked one cigarette after another, however, inhaling 
the smoke into his shrunken lungs, and the sight made 
all of us feel sorry, I guess, for the foolhardiness of the 
man. Finally Dunwoody looked at his watch and then 
raised his eyes and took a survey of the countenance of 
the consumptive, which was overspread with a deep flush. 
The consumptive’s eyes were extraordinarily bright, too. 

“ ‘ Fatty,’ said Dunwoody, ‘ cash in and go to bed. 
4 You’ve had enough of this. Poker and 112 cigarettes 
for a one-lunger bound for Colorado for his health ! Cash 
in and skip ! ’ 

“ 4 No, I don’t want to quit, George,’ said the consump- 
tive. 4 1 haven’t had anything like enough yet. What’s 
more, I’ve got all of you fellows too much in the hole. 
I only wanted to come in for the fun of it, anyhow, and 
here I .am with a lot of the coin of the three of you. I’ll 
just play on until this pay streak deserts me and give you 
fellows a chance to win out.’ 

“ When he finished saying this the man with the wasted 
lungs had another violent spell of coughing and Dun- 
woody looked worried. But he gave in. 

“ ‘ All right, Fat,’ he said, ‘ do as you derned please, but 
I don’t want to be boxing you up and shipping you back 
to the lake front.’ 

“ Then the game proceeded. I don’t think any of us 
felt exactly right, playing with a man who looked as if 
his days were as short-numbered as a child’s multiplica- 
tion table, but maybe the fact that he was such a com- 
fortable winner from us mitigated our sympathy for him 
just a little bit. He kept on winning steadily for the next 
hour, and about half past 1 in the morning there was a 
good-sized jackpot. It went around half a dozen times. 


194 


TAKING CHANCES. 


all of us sweetening it for five every time the deal 
passed, and finally, on the seventh deal, which was the 
consumptive’s, Danforth, who sat on his left, opened the 
pot. I stayed, and so did Dunwoody. When it was up 
to the dealer he nodded his head to indicate that he 
would stay. We were all looking at him, and we noticed 
that he had gone pale. It was noticeable after the deep 
flush that had covered his face when he entered. 

“ Danforth took two cards. I drew honestly and to 
my hand, which had a pair of kings in it, and I caught 
another one. Dunwoody asked for three and then the 
dealer put the deck down beside him. 

“ ‘ How many is the dealer dishing himself? ’ we all 
happened to ask in chorus. 

“ ‘ None,’ answered the sick man, who seemed to be 
getting paler all the time. 

“ ‘ Pat, hey, Fatty? ’ said Dunwoody. ‘ Must be pretty 
well fixed, or, say, are you gaily enough to try a bluff on 
this? You don’t expect to bluff Danforth out of his own 
pot?’ 

“ The consumptive only smiled a wan smile. 

Well, I hope you are well fixed,’ went on Dunwoody, 
‘ for it’s your last hand. I’m going to send you to your 
bunk as soon as. I win this jack.’ 

The limit,’ said Danforth, the pot-opener, skating 
five white chips into the center. 

Five more,’ said I, putting the chips in. 

“ * I’U call both of you,’ said Dunwoody, shoving ten 
chips into the pile. 

“ It was up to Dunwoody’s consumptive friend. He 
opened his lips to speak and little dabs of blood appeared 
at both corners of his mouth. His head fell back and 
at the same time the cards in his hands fell face up on 
the table. The hand was an ace high flush of diamonds. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


195 


Dunwoody was standing over him in an instant, and Dan- 
forth and I both jumped up. Dunwoody wiped the blood 
away from the man’s mouth with his handkerchief and 
then put the back of his hand on the man’s face. 

It’s cold,’ said Dunwoody, with a queer look. 

“ Then he placed his ear to his friend’s heart. We 
waited for him to look up with a good deal of suspense. 
He raised his head after about thirty seconds. 

“ ‘ Crowhurst’s dead,’ was all he said. 

“ Dunwoody telegraphed ahead for an undertaker to 
meet the train at Omaha. He gathered up the cards, too, 
and the chips. 

“ ‘ Crowhurst won that pot,’ he whispered to us. ‘ His 
pat flush beat all our threes.’ 

“ Dunwoody was banker and he cashed all of the dead 
man’s chips. Then he took Crowhurst’s body back from 
Omaha to Chicago in a box. Dunwoody handed the $580 
the dead man had won from us to his mother, telling her 
that her son had given him the money to keep for him 
before turning into his sleeper bunk. 

“ That,” concluded the man who sells bridges and tres- 
tles, “ is the reason I’ve cut card-playing on trains for 
the past seven years.” 


196 


TAKING CHANCES. 


QUEER PACIFIC COAST POKER. 

When Yon Get into a Game of Draw in California It Is 
Well to Ascertain the Rules in Advance. 


“ Before sitting into a game of poker anywhere near 
tidewater out on the Pacific coast you’ll always find it a 
pretty good scheme to make a few preliminary inquiries 
of your fellow players as to the kind of poker you’re ex- 
pected to mix up with,” said a traveling man who had 
recently returned to the East after a tour on the Slope. 
“ Because I neglected to do this myself on several occa- 
sions I got into all sorts of embarrassing situations and 
all colors of poker trouble all the way from Portland, 
Ore., to San Diego, Cal., and the fellows with whom I 
did little stunts at draw — all good people, business men 
I met with through letters — put me down as the worst 
jay in a game of cards that ever crossed the Rocky Moun- 
tains. The folks out there think we’re all jays back here, 
anyhow, if for no other reason than that we haven’t 
enough brains to migrate in a body to the Pacific Slope, 
but they complacently told me that I was the worst of 
the species they had ever seen, simply because I couldn’t 
seem to get the hang of the queer old game they call poker 
out in that country. 

“ The game they dub poker out there isn’t poker at all, 
in my opinion. It’s a hybrid sort of affair, full of fancy 
moves that must have been chucked into the original 
game by early California vaqueros with such a taste for 
embellishment that they had to tack gilt fringe on to their 
pants and to encircle their hats with silver cable. What- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


197 


ever they call it, it’s not American draw poker by a 
darned sight. The kind of poker that I was raised on — 
the real thing, the article of draw that we play on this 
side of the Alleghanies — doesn’t take any more account 
of the joker, for instance, than it does of the card case; 
but out in California they think a man’s plumb blind crazy 
if he registers a kick over having the joker in the deck. 
I’d as lief play old maid or grab for corn-silk cigarettes 
as play draw poker with the joker mixed up in it; but 
out there I had to take the game as it was served up, 
and, as between poker with a joker and no poker at 
all, I, of course, accepted the lesser of the two evils and 
played. But I got dumped on the game for about 2,000 
miles of coast line, and that, too, by people who didn’t 
have to count themselves because they were so many at 
the game. The trouble was that I played the game of draw 
that I was brought up on and they played their cross- 
bred game, and the result was just about as queer as it 
would be to see a baseball pitcher chucking up a Rugby 
football to a cricket batsman with a fence picket in his 
hands. 

“ I’ll not forget my first run-in with this poker-joker 
idea. This was my first visit to the slope, you know and, 
although I’d often heard vaguely that young ’uns, play- 
ing draw for beans or tin tags, once in a while shoved 
the joker into the pack for the fun of the thing. I, of 
course, never dreamed that rational adult human beings 
in any quarter of the earth could have the nerve to inflict 
such a dismal outrage upon the noble game of draw as 
to slap the joker into a poker deck. But I found out dif- 
ferent the very first game of draw that I sat into out in 
San Francisco. 

“ It was a four-handed game, and I was the only East- 
ern man in the bunch. The other three fellows were 


98 


TAKING CHANCES. 


business men who belong to the Native Sons’ organiza- 
tion, which accounts for the weird brand of poker they 
played. They played what was taught ’em in their youth 
out there; didn’t know any better, and thought, and no 
doubt still think, that their game is right. 

“ I was banker, and dished up the first hand. It was 
25 cents ante and $5 limit. I gave myself two rattling 
good pairs, kings up on tens. All of the other fellows 
stayed, and the man on my right made it a couple of 
dollars more to draw cards. This let two of ’em out of 
it, but I thought my two pairs were good enough for a 
$2 raise, and so I played with the raiser. He drew one 
card, and so, of course, did I. It was his bet, and he 
came at me on the double with the limit. I’d caught an- 
other king, and had as neat-looking a full house as a 
man needs to have in any kind of a game. 

“ ‘ Five more’n you,’ said I, and we shuttled the limit 
back and forth until we each had about $50 in the pot. 
Said I to myself, ‘ I’ve got you beat, my boy, for the 
percentage of the game is ’way against your holding 
fours against my full hand, especially on the first clatter 
out of the box, and, even if you’ve filled those two pairs 
of yours — which you probably haven’t, for the percentage 
is plumb against you — you certainly haven’t got aces on 
top.’ Now, that was good poker reasoning, the kind of 
reasoning that has kept me necktie and peanut money 
ahead of the game anyway for twenty years or so, and 
I gave him the raise-back just as often as he threw it 
at me. 

“ ‘ Finally,’ said he, ‘ we are getting out of our depth 
and beyond the breaker line, ain’t we? I’ve got you 
man-handled, but you junipers from the East never can 
feel the hunch when you are licked, and so I’ll skate in 
my little five and call you.’ 


TAKING CHANCES. 


199 


“ We each had about $80 in the pot then. 

I spread out my three royal gentlemen topping the 
pair of tens, and was just about to make some good- 
natured crack about getting a hoe to scoop in my win- 
nings on the first hand, when he spread out his hand and 
raked in the pot with a smile. His hand consisted of a 
pair of aces up on a pair of sixes and the joker. 

What the dickens are you doing there ?’ I asked him 
when he raked in the pot. ‘ Can’t you see it’s a misdeal ? 
I forgot to take the joker out of the deck.’ 

Misdeal nothing,’ he said, still smiling. 4 You had 
a good hand all right, but aces beat kings, you know, 
anywhere from Tuolume to Tucson.’ 

Yes,’ said I, 4 but you’ve only got aces up, and I’ve 

got a full hand, kings up, and it’s a misdeal, anyhow’ 

44 Well, they all looked at me like they thought I ought 
to be in a lunatic asylum. 

44 4 Misdeal ? ’ said my friend who had swiped the pot. 

4 What the deuce are you giving us, anyhow ? I caught 
the joker on the draw, and it just filled my hand — three 
aces and a pair of sixes. Don’t an ace-full beat a king- 
full in that desolate Atlantic coast region you hail from ? ’ 
44 4 You mean you call the joker an ace?’ said I, the 
thing beginning to dawn upon me. 

44 The three fellows gazed at me as if they were trying 
to find out if I was drunk or not. 

44 4 Why, do you mean to say,’ said the man I had played 
with, 4 that you don’t know that in poker the joker is 
any old thing you choose to make it — that, when you get 
it either on the deal or on the draw, you can call it any- 
thing you want to call it to eke out a pair, flush, full house 
or anything else? Tell you what, old man, you need 
sleep. You’ve been working too hard. Turn in and 
have a long night of it.’ 


200 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ I couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Well/ said I, ‘you people may call this joker-jig- 
gling poker, but somehow or another it suggests tag and 
I-spy and little girls singing “ London Bridge is falling 
down ” to me. Why in the devil don’t you play poker 
with a pinochle deck and be done with it ? Come on, and 
we’ll build card houses, or what’s the matter with playing 
casino for chalk or pin- wheels ? ’ 

“ ‘ Why, don’t you benighted people back East use the 
joker? ’ 

“ 4 Yes,’ said I, ‘ we do. We always give the joker in 
a new deck to babies in arms to cut their teeth on.’ 

“ Another queer kink in the slope game of draw is 
that straights don’t go. I’ve been catching occasional 
pat straights and drawing to ’em all my life, and I think 
the straight is one of the prettiest plays in poker. In 
playing straights, if the chap across the table draws one 
card, you’ve got the fun of trying to figure out whether 
he’s drawing to a couple of pairs or bobbing to a straight 
or a flush, and it’s interesting work. If he stands pat, 
it’s up to you to determine by the mind-reading process 
whether he’s simply bluffing or actually has a pat straight 
or full hand or flush in his paws. 

“ Well, out on the coast they’ve heard accasional ru- 
mors of such things as straights being played somewhere 
or another in the game of draw, but you won’t meet one 
coast man in a hundred that knows precisely what the 
straight consists of and what the chances are of a man’s 
getting a pat straight or of filling a one-ended or double- 
ended straight. As for playing straights, they’ve never 
even dreamed of such an absurdity. I found that out in 
the second game of draw I got into out there. 

“ It was in Portland, and another four-handed game, 
the other three fellows being business men also. We 


TAKING CHANCES. 


201 


played along for a while without my running into any 
snags sticking out of the coast game, and then I got on 
the deal four cards that had in them the making of a 
corking good straight, capable of being filled at either 
end, from nine up to queen, so that either an eight or a 
king on the draw would have fixed me all right. I de- 
cided to draw to it just for luck, although all three of the 
fellows were in and had stood a rise before the draw. 
When I caught my king I was glad I had decided to draw 
to my straight. A king-high straight is a pretty good mess 
of cards in any man’s game of draw as we know draw 
back in these parts. 

“ There was a heap of betting on that round, and, of 
course, with that clipper-built straight of mine, I wasn’t 
going to let any of ’em put it on me. I met every raise 
and stuck so persistently and confidently that the whole 
three of them began to regard me as the main guy so far 
as that deal was concerned and look a bit afraid of me. 
The last time I raised it they kind o’ exchanged looks, 
and the man at my left called me. The other two men 
followed suit, and there was a general laying down of 
hands. The man at my left had three eights, the fellow 
next to him aces up on treys, and the man at my right 
three sixes. I projected my right arm to sweep in the 
good-sized pot after spreading out my king-high straight. 

“ ‘ Hold up, there ! ’ they all yelled at me at once. 
‘ What’s all this ? What are you trying to do — hypnotize 
us ? ’ And the man who had laid down his three eights 
made a reach for the pot. 

“ It was now my turn to think the whole three of 
’em looney. 

“ ‘ Is there so much smoke in here,’ said I, ‘ that you 
three people can’t perceive that I’ve got a king-high 
straight ? ’ 


202 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ ‘ Straight ? ’ said the man with the three eights. 
‘ Straight be damned ! You’ve got one king up on noth- 
ing. How old are you, anyhow — seven? Straight? 
Listen to him ! ’ And the three of ’em gave the hoarse 
hoot in chorus. I asked ’em to get around me and pinch 
ne, because I wanted to find out if I was dreaming or 
not, but they were too busy leaning back in their chairs 
and roaring like so many wild asses of the woods to pay 
any attention to me. That’s what I got for not inquiring 
beforehand into the kind of draw I stacked up against 
in Portland. 

“ The next poker knock I got was down in Santa Bar- 
bara. I got into a game of draw with three hotel clerks, 
all good fellows, but all addicted to the nursery poker 
they play out there, and again I forgot to nail ’em up 
against the wall and make ’em exude information about 
the kind of game they purposed playing. We got along 
all right for an hour or so, and at the end of the time 
I was comfortably well ahead of the game. It kind o’ 
tickled me, too, when I caught the joker on the draw 
three or four times and beat ’em out on their own game — 
which is a silly game, and about as brainy as bean-bag, 
all the same. I also kept away from my inclination to 
draw to straights, and, having made this much progress, 
I really didn’t think I was in for any more rude and costly 
surprises in the game. That ’s where I did the leap-year 
figuring. 

“ I gave myself a neat mess of clubs — four of them — 
with the ace for a capstone. I have always been lucky 
in bobbing to flushes, and this looked good. Two of the 
other fellows drew two cards each, and the other man 
asked for one. I gave myself another club, and tried to 
look gloomy and depressed. An ice-high flush has al- 
ways been good enough for me on this side of the con- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


20 ^ 


tinent, and I bet it for all it was worth. The three hotel 
clerks evidently thought they were pretty well fixed, too, 
and, although there was nothing frantic about the betting, 
it was nice and smooth and even, and the pot grew in a 
way that suited me down to the ground. When it got so 
large on five-dollar raises as we thought it ought to be 
there was a general suggestion for a call and a show- 
down. Two of my fellow players had threes, small 
ones, and the other two pairs that we wouldn’t stay 
with very long back in this neck of the woods. Well, I 
flashed my ace-high flush of clubs on them, and was just 
about to say something about easy money when the man 
with the best threes scooped in the pot. 

“ ‘ Must have left your specs at home, my boy,’ said I, 
thinking he was only fooling. ‘ Pass that pile over.’ 

“ ‘ For why? ’ said he. 

“ Then I looked him over and saw that he was serious. 

“ ‘ For why ? ’ I repeated. ‘ Well, the instructors at 
whose feet I sat to learn what is learnable about the game 
of draw poker always taught me to believe that a flush is 
better than threes.’ 

“ ‘ Yes,’ said he, ‘ but didn’t you draw a card? ’ 

“ ‘ What the devil difference does that make ?’ I in- 
quired. 

“ ‘ Oh,’ said he patronizingly, ‘ I see you’re a bit new 
at the game. You see, you can’t draw to flushes. You’ve 
got to hold ’em pat.’ 

“ Well, that was the worst jab I had yet received, but I 
had to stand for it, on the ‘ do-as-the-Romans-do’ princi- 
ple. 

“ In San Diego I got into a game with some fellows 
who were so warm that they wouldn’t play anything but 
jack-pots. At the start-off of the game— the first hand— 
none of the four of us could open it. It went around 


204 


TAKING CHANCES. 


three times, and on the fourth deal I caught a pair of 
queens. Two of the other fellows stayed. I caught an- 
other queen, and played the hand for all it was worth. 
When I was called I showed down my hand, and had ’em 
both beat. 

“ ‘ Foul hand,’ said they. 4 You didn’t have openers,’ 
and they looked at me suspiciously. 

“ ‘ The dickens you say ! ’ said I. f I went in with a 
pair of queens and caught another one — there they are.’ 

“ ‘ But you needed aces,’ said they, all at once. ‘ It 
went around four times, and jack-pots are progressive, of 
course. D’ye mean to say you didn’t know that? Sorry, 
old man, that we’ll have to split the pot.’ 

“ ‘ Are they always progressive out here ? ’ I asked. 

“ ‘ Always,’ they answered, and that settled it. The 
pot was split.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


205 


THE PROPER TIME TO GET “ COLD FEET/’ 


Few Gamblers Perceive “ the Pyschological Moment” 
For Quitting Play and Retiring Rich. 

An old man whose mind is still alert, and the move- 
ments of whose tall, somewhat stooped body are as free 
and spry as those of many a man fifty years his junior, is 
Cole Martin, once the most famous faro dealer in this 
country. He slipped the cards out of the box for the 
statesmen with a perchant for gaming who lived in Wash- 
ington fifty, forty, and thirty years ago, when it was 
deemed no disgrace for the strong men of the land to 
try an occasional buck at the tiger, openly and above 
board. Martin is now verging upon 80 years of age, 
and even to the present generation of Washingtonians his 
white-bearded countenance is very familiar. His age 
does not tell upon him, and his commerce among men is 
about as wide now, he says, as it was back in the fifties. 
He had a great deal of money at one time in his career, 
but most of it went by the board. He had the caution 
to purchase an annuity for himself a good many years 
ago, and upon this he lives comfortably. Pie has passed 
most of his life in Washington, but before and after 
the war of the rebellion he had adventures in many parts 
of the United States where gaming was at its highest. 
He is a mine of curious, first-hand information about 
the statesmen-gamesters who were great figures in the 
national life of the country before the war, and the local 
newspaper have published many of his reminiscences of 
this sort. He is not garrulous, but once he gets into his 


2 o6 


TAKING CHANCES. 


stride and the company is congenial he talks well and 
entertainingly. He was speaking recently of the case of 
the well-known young American turf plunger who, after 
having beaten the English racing game to the tune of 
$150,000 a few weeks ago, waded in so recklessly that, 
only a short time later, he quit $90,000 to the bad. 

“ Another example of the chance taker who has not 
mastered the fine science of quitting,” was his way of 
summing it up. “ That seems to be the most difficult 
point in the gambling business — to know just the right 
time to quit. Few men master it. I never did, myself. 
I wish I had. Any fool can go on playing when he is 
away ahead of his game, but it takes a man of unusual 
strength of character, perception and foresight to knock 
off when, after riding a high tide, he notices that it be- 
gins to ebb. The scientists, I believe, talk of a ‘psy- 
chological moment.’ I don’t know of any business in 
life in which the psychological moment plays a greater 
part than it does in gambling. Most of this country’s 
old-time gamesters have died, as you know, very poor, or, 
worse, poverty-stricken. I never hear of the death of 
one of them leaving not enough money behind to have 
his body put into the ground that I don’t recall the time 
when he had tens or hundreds of thousands. The gam- 
bler by profession has many a psychological moment in 
the course of his career, but he rarely takes advantages of 
them. He goes on dabbling at a percentage that his com- 
mon-sense tells him is against him, and that he has only 
temporarily beaten, and after a while he finds himself 
broke; then he asks himself remorsefully why he didn’t 
break off when he was on top of the wave. I have known 
a few professional gamblers who knew just when to quit. 
Some of them are still alive, old men like myself, and 


TAKING CHANCES. 


20 7 


they are well fixed. Those of them who are dead left 
good sums of money behind them. 

“ I once saw George Plantagenet, one of the best 
known of the New Orleans gamblers before the war, win 
$60,000 in an afternoon’s play at faro. This was in Mem- 
phis. He cashed in and left the bank. After supper he 
returned with all of the money and he began to buck 
the king. He played it open every time and the king 
lost eight straight times in two deals. That cost Planta- 
genet $20,000 of his winnings. The lid had been taken 
off the game for him. When the dealer pulled out the 
eighth straight losing king Plantagenet cashed in. He 
was frank enough to admit that he had cold feet. 

“ ‘ While freely acknowledging that I am more or 
less of a d — d fool,’ he said coolly, ‘ I strive for the repu- 
tation of knowing when I’ve got enough, even of a good 
thing. I quit. This is just my time to quit. If the box 
were only depleting me gradually but surely I don’t doubt 
that I’d go until I was all up. But I can see legible hand- 
writing on the wall from as considerable a distance as 
my neighbors, and when I’m on top, as I am now, well 
and comfortably, and eight straight kings range them- 
selves against me on the left hand side of the layout, 
that’s the kind of a signal I’m waiting for, and I pass. 
I’ll bet any man on the side, just for a flyer, $5,000 that 
the next king out of the box wins, but no more faro. 

“ Frank Wooton, the proprietor of the layout, was 
standing by when Plantagenet made this little talk. 

“ * You are wise in your generation, George,’ said he. 
< Now, it is about a 10 to 1 shot against the king losing 
again. Consequently you can afford to give me at least 
2 to 1 on that proposition. I’ll bet you $2,500 to $5,000 
that the king does lose the next time out.’ 

“ ‘ Taken,’ said Plantagenet, covering Wooton’s money, 


208 


TAKING CHANCES. 


and the crowd gathered round to watch the dealer riffle 
the cards. The box was fully half out before a king 
showed, and it showed on the losing side — nine straight. 
Wooton pulled down the side bet. 

“ ‘ Which I may remark/ said Plantagenet with the 
greatest coolness, ‘ that this ninth consecutive lose of the 
king simply confirms and makes j^ood the hunch I had to 
quit when it lost the eighth time. But I will go a bit 
further to prove that my inspiration to quit is a proper 
and sensible one. I will bet you $1,000 that I can buck 
your bank now with dummy chips representing all of 
my winnings and the roll I originally started with, and 
that, although I shall play as carefully and as cautiously 
and as earnestly as I would did the dummy chips really 
represent money, I shall lose every stack within two 
hours/ 

“ Plantagenet and Wooton were old friends, and the 
latter knew that Plantagenet would try to win with the 
dummy chips even though he would be $1,000 loser if 
he did. 

“ ‘ Go ahead and prove your case/ said Wooton, and 
a dealer who was off duty was called upon to deal. Planta- 
genet kept cases himself and played his own particular 
system with all manner of care and effort. Wooton stood 
by and saw that Plantagenet was playing his regular 
game. Plantagenet’s luck had deserted him, and he lost 
two bets out of every three. It seemed impossible for 
him to get down right, and he lost steadily. He had 
played in his last stack in an hour and forty minutes 
and Wooton hand him the $1,000. 

“ ‘ That’s the way it would have been had I been play- 
ing with money/ said Plantagenet, and Wooton agreed 
with him. Plantagenet was one of the men who knew 
when to quit, and when he died, with his grandchildren 


TAKING CHANCES. 


209 


around him, in the early seventies, he left more than 
$500,000 to be distributed among his heirs. 

“ Edmund Baker of Louisville, who was not a pro- 
fessional gambler, but who outdid most of the famous 
professional gamblers of the South in the late fifties in 
the heaviness of his play when he felt in a winning hu- 
mor, was another man who knew when to quit. I saw 
him win $32,000 in one night at bank in the rooms of the 
old Crescent City Club. Then he curled up all of a 
sudden and cashed in. He wasn’t a quitter in the ungen- 
erous sense, but he used to say that the little angel, sup- 
posed by the sailors to sit aloft and watch out for Jack 
Tar, had a habit of informing him, when he was buck- 
ing another man’s game, just the proper time to pass it 
up and quit. It was a matter of pure hunch with him. 
On this occasion Joe Randolph, a heavy player from 
Virginia, twitted Baker a bit for not pressing his luck — 
for quitting when he seemed to be winning four bets 
out of five. 

“ ‘ All right, Randolph,’ said Baker after he had cashed 
in. ‘ I’ll let you make five $10 bets in my behalf on the 
deal now running and I’ll bet you an even $2,000 that I 
(or you) lose four out of the five ; this, just to show you 
that my intuition about the proper time to lay off is 
good.’ 

“ Randolph took that bet, which was a good one, with 
more than an even chance in his favor, and he lost, for 
every one of the five bets lost. Baker would quit when 
he was loser just as suddenly as he would when he was 
away ahead of the game. I saw him lose over $3,000 in 
a four-handed poker game with friends in one of the 
parlors of the old St. Charles Hotel between the hours 
of 6 and 9 o’clock one evening. He had practically an 
unlimited amount of money at his disposal, considering 


210 


TAKING CHANCES. 


the size of the game — $200 limit — but he yawned and 
pushed his chair back with the simple statement that it 
wasn’t his night. The next night he lost $2,000 more 
to the same three friends, and again he resumed his seat. 
On the following night he was $4,000 loser after four 
hours’ play, but he gave no sign of quitting. 

“ ' Isn’t it pretty near time for you to stretch your arms 
and forsake us again, Baker ? ’ asked one of his friends 
in the game, jokingly. 

“ ‘ No,’ said Baker, ‘ I’m going to stay along to-night. 
I’ll begin to win soon, and then you can all stand by.’ 

“ He began to win on the very next deal and at 2 
o’clock in the morning he had not only retrieved his losses 
on the week’s play, but he had all the money in the crowd. 
Baker was possessed of a species of intuition that was 
something extraordinary. I don’t know what else to call 
it but intuition. I never saw him take a daring chance 
that he did not win out on it — chances that no profes- 
sional gambler would dream of taking, and diametrically 
opposed to all of the rules of percentage in games of 
hazard. One night he walked into ‘ Don ’ Haskell’s 
Madrid Club in St. Louis — this was in the fall of ’59 — 
and stood and watched a few deals out of the box at the 
$5oo-limit faro table. Then he reached over and bought 
five yellow — $100 — chips from the dealer. He put them 
all on the ace and coppered the card. The ace lost, and 
the dealer put five yellow chips on the top of the original 
five on the ace, and waited for Baker to haul them down. 
Baker absent-mindedly made no move to take the chips 
until the dealer reminded him of them. 

“ ‘ Let them stand, with the ace coppered,’ said Baker. 

“ ‘ But it’s $500 limit, Mr. Baker,’ said the dealer. 

“ ‘ Let it stand, Jack,’ said ‘ Don ’ Haskell, coming up 
behind Jack and addressing the dealer. ‘ Let it stand 


TAKING CHANCES. 


21 


as long as Mr. Baker wants to make play with the ace cop- 
pered, and we’ll see if we can’t commit assault and battery 
on his “ intuition.” ’ 

“ Baker nodded good-naturedly to Haskell and then 
waited for the turns on the ace. The ace was only half 
a dozen cards below, and it lost. The dealer ranged ten 
more yellows beside Baker’s pile. 

Let them stand, ace coppered,’ said Baker, scanning 
the cases for a few deals back carelessly. 

“ ‘ Don ’ Haskell nodded in the affirmative to the dealer 
and the other players at the table neglected to put any 
bets down in their interest in Baker’s peculiar play. There 
was only one more ace left in the box and it came out a 
loser. The dealer stacked up twenty more yellows beside 
Baker’s pile — $4000 — and he and the proprietor waited for 
Baker to haul them down. Baker leaned back and lit a 
cigar, leaving the $4000 in yellows to stand. 

“ ‘ I’ll leave them there, with the ace coppered, if you’re 
willing, “ Don,” ’ he said quietly to Haskell. 

“ ‘ The longer the better,’ said Haskell, and the dealer 
began to slip them out. The first ace was way down in 
the center of the box, and Haskell looked a bit chagrined 
when it came out a loser. 

“ ‘ Eight thousand, eh ? ’ he said, looking over the stack 
of yellows on the coppered ace. ‘ One more whirl at it, 
Baker — that’ll be about all I can stand to-night if you take 
it down.’ 

“ The ace came out on the losing side again — a thing 
that no professional gambler would have bet on had he 
been offered 5 to 1 on the proposition — and Baker cashed 
in $16,000. He would have let it run again had Haskell 
been able to stand it, but the ‘ Don ’ had enough. Baker 
stood by and watched the ace come out a loser twice again 
and then he put $500 on it to win. It won and he took 


212 


TAKING CHANCES. 


the boat for New Orleans with $16,500 of Haskell’s 
money. Three months later, when Frank Caxton, Ned 
Ripley and Monk Terhune, a well-known New Orleans 
trio of tiger buckers, broke the Madrid Club’s bank roll 
wide open, to the tune of $100,000, Baker was the man 
who started Haskell in business again. 

“ When I was dealing heavy games myself I used often 
to have a sudden feeling that it was time for some strong 
bucker on the other side of the table to cash in and quit, 
but of course it was no part of my business to make any 
such suggestions. I was dealing a game once in Wash- 
ington, in the winter of ’66, when the outcast son of a rich 
tobacco man of Richmond came along and whacked my 
box for $12,000 in a single night’s play at $200 limit. 
I knew the young fellow pretty well, and I knew that 
since his father had run him out of Richmond he had 
had more than his share of hard luck. In fact, he had 
often been hungry, and I had often given him a $5 or 
$10 bill, being pretty flush myself just then. He had 
started in on my box with a shoestring — where he got it 
I don’t know — and, as I say, he got me to the tune of 
$12,000 before I turned the box on him for the night. 
The man in whose interest I was dealing was very wealthy 
and a generous man. He knew the young chap’s father. 
He came to me after the young man had left with his 
winnings and said : 

“ 4 You’d better hunt up that boy and tell him that he’d 
better not play any more. He’s had his run of luck, and 
he’s got enough to give himself a start. I don’t want the 
money back. If he handles it right it’ll do him more 
good than it would me. Just try to pound a bit of sense 
into the lads’ head.’ 

“ That was a pretty square talk to come from the throat 
of a man whose bank had been raided. I hunted the 


TAKING CHANCES. 


213 


young fellow up that morning and told him about it. He 
was full of hifalutin’ talk about wanting to give the pro- 
prietor of the bank a chance and all that sort of thing. 

“ ‘ He can take care of himself/ said I to the boy. ‘ He 
knows your father, and I dare say he’s clipped your 
father’s bank roll for a good deal more than $12,000 on 
occasions when your dad has visited Washington and 
gone against the bank. Better array yourself in purple 
and fine linen, keep sober, and go back to the Governor 
in Richmond with a high head and a proper countenance. 
That’ll be better than walking into Richmond in need of 
a Russian bath.’ 

“ The fever was on the boy, though, and he couldn’t 
keep his promise to me to stop. He came in that night, 
and in half an hour’s play he ran his $12,000 up to 
$15,000. I kicked him under the table then, as a sort of 
final warning. He paid no attention to me, though. 
Then he began to lose, and in three hours he was flat 
broke. He went out with a wild light in his eye, and the 
next morning he was found dead in his little boarding- 
house room, with a bullet in his brain. 

“ It may be true, in the ordinary sense, that Providence 
hates a quitter, but that doesn’t apply to gambling. The 
knowledge of when to get cold feet, and the gentle art of 
doing the same, are valuable assets for any man who tries 
to buck another man’s game.” 


214 


TAKING CHANCES. 


CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER. 

And They Got Him the Whole Length of the Missouri j, 
Until He Went Against Another Game and Won Out. 


“ A man hunting for poker trouble could get a-plenty 
of it on the Big Muddy stern-wheelers around the latter 
sixties and the early seventies,” said Joe Reilly of Sioux 
City. “ There weren’t many regular poker sharks work- 
ing the Missouri River boats in those days like there were 
on the Mississippi steamers, but just the same the men 
that traveled on those weather-boarded, lop-sided old 
sand-bar wagons on the Big Muddy all knew how to play 
poker some, I’m a-telling you. Cato Bullman found this 
out when he went up against a whole lot of different men’s 
games on the old ‘ Gen. W. T. Sherman ’ in 1872. 

“ Bullman was pardners with Nate Stillwater in run- 
ning a big general store in Yankton, and both of ’em were 
making a mint of money at the time I’m going to tell you 
about. They’d ha’ made more, I guess, if Stillwater 
hadn’t drank too much whisky and Bullman hadn’t played 
too much poker. Now, all in all, Stillwater handled his 
whisky pretty well, and at such times as he found it was 
getting a half-Nelson on him he’d leave it off for a spell 
and attend to business, so that his end of the dissipation 
of the firm of Stillwater & Bullman wasn’t half as bad 
as Cato’s. Cato loved to play poker so much that he’d 
knock right off in the middle of selling a bill of goods 
to a gang of freighters to go off somewheres and sit in a 
game. Now, this wouldn’t have been so bad, even if it 
was darned poor business policy, if Cato ever won. But 


TAKING CHANCES. 


21 $ 

he never did. He had no license ever to touch a pack 
of cards. In the first place, he was a yap at cards, 
and any American kid that knew how to play old maid 
could have hopped out of the back of a prairie schooner 
and beaten Cato out of his boots at the game for money, 
marbles or chalk. In the second place, Cato was a nat- 
ural born hoodoo. If he was drawing to three aces, and 
the other fellow was taking five cards, the other fellow’d 
beat Cato out and have plenty to space. So that it was 
just about up to Cato to holler murder and take to the 
brush whenever anybody flashed a pack of the pasteboards 
on him. But he didn’t see it this way. He went right on 
playing poker and getting soaked for his share of the 
profits of the firm. Cato appeared to be just stone-blind 
to the fact that the foxy people that didn’t do much of 
anything else around Yankton except to play cards were 
in a fair way to fix themselves with meal tickets for life 
at his expense, and as he was pretty near seven foot high 
and built in proportion, none of us felt like trying to kick 
any sense into his fool head. 

“ Anyhow, in the summer of ’72 Bullman started down 
the river on the old ‘ Gen. W. T. Sherman ’ for St. Louis 
to buy goods. He had $10,000 in greenbacks along with 
him. Before he went aboard the boat Stillwater, who 
wasn’t much more’n five foot high, ranged himself along- 
side Cato’s big carcass, and says he : 

“ ‘ Cato, this here v’yage you’re about to embark on is 
a business trip and nothin’ else. It ain’t no jamboree 
and it ain’t no poker picnic. There’s some smooth people 
gits aboard these here mud ploughs down below at the 
landings, and in their hands you’d be nothin’ but a great 
big moon-eyed jayhawker, which you are. So through- 
out this here journey you’d best git ’way up on top o’ the 
boat and sit on a pile o’ planks just abaft the pilot-house 


TAKING CHANCES. 


2i 6 

and smoke your pipe. You’re not to play no poker at all, 
you hear me ? When you git stuck on a sandbar you can 
fish over the side for bullhead catfish, but you don’t play 
no poker. If, when you git back here, I hear that you’ve 
been playing poker, I’ll mangle you up a heap ; now you 
hear me a-talkin’.’ 

“ Cato reached down, picked up his partner by the 
scruff of the neck, and held him out at arm’s length. 

“ ‘ I ain’t a-goin’ to play no poker, old man/ says he 
to Stillwater. ‘ Won’t touch no cards at all till I git back. 
Kind o’ lost my knack at the cards lately, anyhow,’ as if he 
ever had any knack at ’em. ‘ And you want to let the red- 
eye alone while I’m gone, too,’ Cato finished, and then 
set his little partner down. Then Cato went aboard the 
boat. As I was going along down to St. Louis myself, 
Stillwater calls me aside and says to me : 

“ ‘ Jest keep an eye on that big galoot on the way down, 
and if he gits restless and shows an inclination to get tan- 
gled up with a poker deck, jest bat him over the head 
with a capstan bar.’ 

“ But I wasn’t making any rash promises like that. 
Well, Cato was all right the first day out, and he fol- 
lowed his pardner’s instructions and sat around on deck 
smoking his corn-cob pipe and feeling his big wallet occa- 
sionally. He kept as far away as possible from the little 
deck-house where a game was started going before the 
boat pushed out into the stream, but the rattle of the chips 
was bound to reach his ears occasionally. On the second 
day some stockmen got aboard that Cato knew, and Cato 
took a few drinks with ’em. Then they invited Cato 
into a little game. Cato looked at me kind o’ guilty like, 
and then shook himself together like a man does that 
says to himself, ‘ It’s nobody’s danged business but my 
own.’ So he sits into the game with the stockmen. They 


TAKING CHANCES. 


21 7 


were only going down a few landings, and when they got 
off they had $2000 of Cato’s money. I never in my life 
before or since saw such hoodoo luck as Cato had in that 
game with those stockmen. He didn’t get a pair more’n 
once in a hundred hands, and if he did get a pair and hap- 
pened to better it in the draw he’d give a hoot that ’ud 
wake up the owls ashore and then bet like an Ogallala 
Sioux with four aces and a dirk knife. It was just sim- 
ply painful to watch Cato in that game, and no mistake. 
When the stockmen got off some of them actually looked 
so sorry for Cato that I kind o’ thought they’d offer to give 
him his money back. But they didn’t. 

“ ‘ I’m kind o’ out o’ luck lately,’ says Cato to me after 
the stockmen had got off with his $2000, * and I b’lieve 
I’ll just draw in now and wait for a hunch. No good 
buckin’ agin’ a streak o’ bad luck, is there ? ’ 

“ Well, I told him that if my io-year-old boy down in 
Sioux City wasn’t able to play poker any better than he, 
Cato, could before he put on long trousers and suspenders 
I’d send him up to a lumber camp until he became of age. 
But Cato didn’t pay any attention to me, and when an 
awkward, overworked-looking man, dressed like a farmer, 
got aboard a couple of landings below he struck up an 
acquaintance with him. This farmer-like looking man 
had a pretty keen pair of eyes in his head, as I noticed, 
and he had besides that yokelly way of finding out 
about other people’s business. So it didn’t take him 
long to dig it out of Cato that Cato was going down to 
St. Louis to buy a stock of goods. The three of us were 
sitting on the hind rail, whittling, when this farmer-like 
looking man turns to Cato and asks him : 

“ 4 Ever play ke-ards ? ’ 

“ Cato looked at me again and hesitated. 

“ * Oh, wunct in a while,’ says he, finally, and in a pair 


2l8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


of minutes they were in the middle of a poker game. The 
stranger asked me to sit in, of course, but I could see 
that he wasn’t over-anxious to have me in the game, and 
I never played poker on steamboats, stern-wheel or side- 
wheel, anyhow. 

“ Cato’s hoodoo luck followed him right along in his 
game with the overworked-looking man, who seemed to 
me to have considerable of a job covering up a natural 
sort of deftness he had in handling a pack. The two 
played for three or four hours, the stranger announcing 
occasionally that he was going to get off at the next land- 
ing, so’s to screen himself from the inference that he was 
getting cold feet, probably. He was about $1000 ahead 
of Cato’s game when the boat was nearing his landing. 

“ ‘ Hev to make it a jackpot naow,’ said he, when the 
old stern-wheeler began to wheeze and snort a little pre- 
paratory to stopping at the landing. 

“ He dealt the jackpot hand himself and each man had 
$100 in the center of the table. It was to be sweetened 
for $100 each time the deal passed. But it didn’t pass. 
Cato opened the pot for $100 and his Reuben-looking 
opponent stayed. The betting swayed back and forth 
until each man had $1000 up, and then the farmer-like 
looking man called Cato. Cato had three eights. The 
other man had three tens. The other man stuffed the 
bills from the center of the table into his overalls, shook 
Cato quite effusively by the hand, and went ashore. 

Got enough ? ’ says I to Cato when the old sandbar- 
bucker was once again under way. 

Say,’ says he to me, 4 ye can’t never jedge a man by 
his looks, can ye ? That man knows a hull heap more’n 
you’d think, don’t he ? ’ 

“ ‘ Got enough, Cato? ’ I repeats, for I wanted to pin 
him to the question in hand. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


219 


Well, I shorely am out o’ luck, and no mistake/ 
was as far as he would commit himself. 

“ The next day a man who looked like members of 
Congress out my way used to look got aboard. He was 
dress in a long black broadcloth coat and wore a big 
black slouch hat, and he carried himself like a man that 
amounted to a good deal. He was amiable in his man- 
ners, though, and he hadn’t been aboard more’n half an 
hour before he happened to fall into talk with Cato. Cato 
was a little sore about the loss of his $4,000, but this 
legislator-like looking man was so entertaining and 
sprung so a lot of good stories over the jug of good stuff 
which Cato brought out of his stateroom that Cato ap- 
peared to forget his troubles for the time. 

“ 4 Monotonous work, this steamboat traveling, isn’t 
it ? ’ says the statesmanlike-looking man to Cato after a 
while. 4 I’ve only four hours traveling to do, and yet 
I’ve been dreading it for a week. What do you say to 
a little game of dime-ante. You play, of course? ’ 

“ Cato scratched his chin. 

“ ‘ Durned if b’lieve I can any more,” said he ruefully, 
and then, like the innocent big dogan that he was, he 
tells his new friend how he has already lost $4,000 on 
the trip down, and that he feels like hanging on to his 
remaining $6,000. 

“ ‘ Oh, but only a little dime-ante game, you know/ 
says the man who looked like a member of Congress, and 
his eyes opened up a bit, I noticed, at the mention of the 
$6,000. 

“ ‘ O. K./ says Cato. ‘ Jest to pass the time/ and down 
they sat. I was asked in, but I told the statesmanlike- 
looking man that I had left my specs up in Yankton and 
therefore couldn’t see the hands well enough to play. 
Well, the dime-ante and the dollar limit that they started 


220 


TAKING CHANCES. 


in at lasted just until Cato got a whopping big hand, 
which happened to be given to him by the man that looked 
like an M. C. 

“ ‘ Say, says Cato then, looking a heap excited, ‘ s’posin’ 
we jest take the limit off’n this here game, anyhow, fur 
a little while ? ’ 

“ ‘ Why, certainly/ says his opponent genially, and 
Cato walks right in and wins $500 clean on that hand of 
his. He gives me a look out o’ the tail of his eye that 
says, ‘ Well, what do you think of me now/ and the game 
goes on. 

“ Well, the M. C.-looking man begins to win quite a 
good deal then, and he, like the farmer-looking man, 
brought the game to a jackpot finish as the boat ap- 
proached his getting-off place. 

“ ‘ Fur how much? , inquired Cato, who was about 
$1,000 out already. 

“ ‘ Oh, about $50 and $50 sweeteners/ said the man 
across the table. 

“ ‘ No, we won’t, either,’ says Cato. ‘ We’ll each put 
in $1,000, an’ no sweeteners. That‘s jest as good fur 
you as ’tis fur me.’ 

“ 4 Exactly,’ says the distinguished looking man play- 
ing with him, and Cato dealt the hands. Neither man 
had openers. Then the other man dealt ’em. Cato open- 
ed it on jacks up on treys, and caught another jack in 
the draw. The boat snorted and wheezed preparatory to 
being made fast. Cato bet a flat $1,000 on his jack full, 
and the M. C.-looking man, looking kind o’ impatient to 
get ashore, win or lose, calls him. Cato lays down his 
jack full with a grin at me — and says his friends across 
the table : 

“ * You do indeed, my friend, appear to labor under a 
blanket of ill-fortune/ and he spreads out his four nines 


TAKING CHANCES. 


221 


and gathers in the pot. Then he hurries ashore, after 
shaking the crestfallen Cato warmly by the hand. 

Got $3,000 left now, haven’t you, Cato ? ’ says I 
then, for it began to look to me as if word had been 
passed down the whole length of the Missouri River that 
Cato Bullman was traveling on one of its steamboats with 
money. ‘ Better let me keep that $3,000 for you.’ 

No, I’m durned if I do,’ says Cato. ‘ Might as well 
lose it all now, devil take it,’ and he gnawed on his finger- 
nails, thinking about what kind of a story he’d put up to 
his partner, I guess, when he got back to Yankton broke. 

“ Well, Cato did lose it all, or close on to all of it. He 
foregathered with a man that got aboard at Omaha, and 
said he was a civil engineer for the Union Pacific Rail- 
road. The civil engineer got $1,800 of Cato’s green- 
backs, and then got off. Twenty miles below Omaha, at 
a little handing, a gappy looking hog raiser that Cato had 
met before climbed over the rail, and Cato thought he 
saw a chance to recoup his drooping fortunes. The hog 
raiser relieved Cato of $1,000, and had an important en- 
gagement to look at some fancy hogs at the next stop. 
This left Cato with $200. 

“ * Convinced that you’re a damphool yet, Cato ? ’ 
says I. 

“ ‘ Dang’d if I don’t begin b’lieve I am,’ he owns up. 

“ ‘ How about those goods you were going to buy in 
St. Louis ? ’ I asked him. 

“ ‘ I dunno,’ he said, mournful like. 

“ Well, when we got to Leavenworth, Kan., the wheezy 
old Sherman tied up for twenty-four hours for repairs to 
the machinery. Cato was pretty gloomy. We went 
ashore and put up at the old Planters’ House. On the 
night we struck Leavenworth I walked Cato around to 
sort o’ relieve his mind. We were strolling down Shaw- 


222 


TAKING CHANCES. 


nee street when we both saw a pretty much lighted up 
place into which a lot of well-gotten up men were going. 
When we came up to the place we heard the rattle of the 
chips and click of the marble and the choppy talk of the 
keno men, and then we saw that it was Col. Jennison’s 
famous Bon Ton gambling joint, running wide open and 
full blast. Cato made for the door. I grabbed him by 
the sleeve. 

“ ‘ Come out o’ that,’ says I. ‘ You’ve only got $200, 
which won’t more’n get you back to Yankton. Haven’t 
you been enough of an idiot already ? ’ 

“ ‘ I got a hunch,’ says Cato, releasing himself from 
me and starting again for the door. 

“ ‘ Hunch ! ’ says I, but he was already inside. 

“ Well, Cato goes up to the faro table where the big 
men of the town seem to be playing bank, and says I to 
myself, ‘ Joe, you’ll have to dig up to send this crazy 
man back to his pardner in Yankton.’ 

“ Cato bought $200 worth of chips, tapping himself, 
and began. Gentlemen, he couldn’t lose. He scattered 
his chips over every card on the table, and he couldn’t 
lose. He won eight bets out of ten. He let his money 
lie on cards four times over, and won every time. He 
didn’t use a copper, but played every card wide open. 
There didn’t seem to be a split in the box for Cato. In 
less than twenty minutes he had won over $3,000. There 
was a $500 limit on the game. Cato asked to have it 
removed. When the limit was taken off, Cato made 
three $1,000 bets running, and won every one of them. 
Then he came off his perch and got down to $200 bets 
again, playing ’em like a veteran, and just simply unable 
to lose, gentlemen. The rest of the men at the table 
quit playing just to watch Cato. Once in a while Cato’d 
play the high card, just to see if his luck was holding. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


223 


The high card came out every time he did it. They 
switched the dealer three times. They switched the look- 
out half a dozen times. They tried different boxes. 
They changed tables. They did everything. But, gen- 
tlemen, Cato Bullman was playing faro, and he couldn’t 
lose. I was proud of the big duffer. In an hour he was 
$18,000 ahead of Col. Jennison’s bank. They sent across 
the way to get Col. Jennison who was playing a quiet 
little game of poker in the Star of the West saloon. Col. 
Jennison came over to the Bon Ton and sat down to han- 
dle the box for Cato himself. Cato soaked Col. Jenni- 
son every bit as hard as he had soaked all of Col. Jen- 
nison’s dealers. Col. Jennison was game, but, when at 
the end of three hours, Cato was still going right ahead 
winning like a cyclone, he turned the box over with this 
little remark : 

“ ‘ Gentlemen, the game is closed for the night.’ 

“ When Cato cashed in he had just $35,200. I took him 
by the arm and walked him down to the hotel and got him 
into his room. Cato went to the basin to wash his hands. 
When he turned around to me again he looked into the 
barrels of both my guns. 

“ ‘ Cato,’ says I, ‘ I’m sorry, but I’ll just trouble you to 
hand over every cent of that $35,200 you’ve got, right 
away now, darned quick, or I’ll blow the whole top of 
your head off.’ 

“ Cato didn’t demur a little bit. He plunked the 
money down — most of it was in $1,000 and $500 bills 
on the table. 

‘“I don’t suppose I’ve got enough sense to pack it 
around, fur a fac’,’ said he. 

“ When we got to St. Louis I handed Cato $10,000 to 
buy his goods with, and expressed the $23,200 to his ad- 
dress in Yankton. 


224 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ ‘ Well/ said his little pardner, Stillwater, when Cato 
got back to Yankton, ‘ s’long as you won, you big clod- 
hopper, I don’t s’pose I need to mangle you up none. 
But if you had lost ! 9 ” 


taking chances. 


225 


FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN. 


He Was Too Handy with the Pasteboards, Wherefore 
He Arrived Prematurely in the “Happy Hunting 
Grounds.” 


“ It happens more or less frequently,” said a traveling 
Inspector of Indian Agencies, “ that an educated buck 
Indian degenerates in the long run into a bad proposition. 
Fm thinking particularly of an educated Oregon Indian, 
about a three-quarter blood, who got the big-head so bad 
after he had been polished off mentally back this way 
that he never mixed up with his people when he re- 
turned from the East. He was a Umatilla. He was 
first sent to Carlisle, and when he had finished there he 
was passed on to Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, to take 
the law course there. It was in view that he was to be- 
come the attorney for his tribe upon the conclusion of his 
Blackstone-thumbing. He squeezed through the law at 
Johns Hopkins, and then he was told of the nice fat thing 
that awaited him out among his own people. He turned 
the proposition down cold. He said flatly that he had no 
intention whatever of mixing up with his own bunch at all 
any more. He likewise remarked that he knew his gait, 
and that he intended to follow it. 

“ A couple of months after he quit Baltimore he turned 
up at The Dalles in Western Oregan and settled down 
to the career of a short poker player. Where he had 
picked up the game it would be hard to say; but he cer- 
tainly was a daisy at it. There wasn’t a kink in the game 


226 


TAKING CHANCES. 


that he didn’t have the hang of. Now, The Dalles isn’t 
any bad man’s camp; it is a very beautiful health rasort 
in the Cascade Mountains, on the south bank of the Co- 
lumbia River; there wasn’t a hard character in the place 
until this educated buck established his headquarters 
there; and it suited his game to a T. He made it his 
business to nail young tourists who didn’t have any more 
sense than to sit into a poker game with a stranger, much 
less an Indian, and an educated Indian at that; and he 
just stripped them in sets of fours for several years. He 
was a splendid-looking buck and he dressed as men dress 
who’ve got the money to tog themselves out right back 
this way. When he was engaged in the act of getting 
a new victim he knew how to throw much cordiality and 
some grace into his manners; but ordinarily he was a 
sulky, morose, bad Indian. ’Way down in the deeps 
of him he was a rank coward, for he never tried to twist 
his tentacles about a man who he thought would make a 
stand, much less a scrap, upon discovering that he was 
being done ; he always picked out palpable lily-livers who 
looked, to his shrewd eye, as if they would stand for any- 
thing rather than mix it up with him. 

“ It did not take the square people of The Dalles long 
to get next to the fact that this educated Indian, who had 
coolly taken up his abode among them, was a cheat and a 
swindler, and that his sole occupation consisted in fleecing 
pulp-headed young tourists. They talked a great deal 
of giving him the razzle-dazzle and chasing him out, but 
somehow or other this suggestion never came to a head. 
The men at The Dalles who had the interest of the place 
at heart would point the swellerino buck out to young 
strangers who looked as if they might be likely victims 
of the Indian short-card fleecer, and tell the young gos- 
lings just where and how the buck stood. It may sound 


TAKING CHANCES. 


227 


incredible, but even after being warned in this fashion 
a whole lot of the young addlepates fell into the buck’s 
mesh and got themselves done to a proper turn by him. 
They were able to take care of themselves, they would 
reply chestily to their warners, and, just to prove it, 
they’d take a hack at the Indian’s game. When they got 
through they’d be smoking punk tobacco in pipes while 
the Indian would be blowing the smoke of perfectos in 
their faces, and they’d stand for their craggy end of it 
without a whistle. The buck was 6 feet 3 inches high 
and weighed 235 pounds, and he looked like a macerator 
from the high ridges. So he was never called by any of 
his Dalles victims, even when they knew the details of 
how they’d been plucked. One poor little devil of a rich 
man’s son from Omaha whimpered one night when the 
Indian had removed about $800 from him by dealing from 
both ends and the middle of the deck, and he said to the 
buck piteously: 

“ 4 1 just hope you’ve played fair, that’s all.’ 

“ The Indian reached over and struck the pollywog 
with all of his force on both side of the face with his two 
open palms, leaving the blood-red welt marks of his fin- 
gers on the lamb’s fair cheeks. The whining victim 
drilled for his life up the hotel stairs to his room, and the 
Indian looked after him sardonically. There wasn’t a 
man about that didn’t know that the Indian had scanda- 
lously cheated the lad, but not a one of them said a word. 
There was a keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray- 
haired man, a stranger, standing at the hotel desk reading 
a just-arrived letter, when the thing happened. His face 
flushed angrily when he saw the burly Indian slap the 
undersized fool of a boy, and he turned to the hotel clerk 
and remarked : 

“ ‘ Is this the real thing here ? Does the gang stand 


228 


TAKING CHANCES. 


for that kind of work on the part of a mud-hided raw- 
meater? ’ There was plenty of contempt in the way the 
stranger spoke. 

“ The clerk shrugged his shoulders. ‘ We can’t under- 
take to cut in on any of the plays of our guests,’ he re- 
plied. ‘ We just board and lodge ’em, that’s all. If 
they’re jays enough to mix up with grafters, it’s their 
game, and we’re not asking for any rake-off, one way or 
the other.’ 

The stranger muttered something about a chicken- 
livered population, and strolled out. He took his train an 
hour or so later. 

“ At certain seasons of the year, when there wasn't 
must doing in his line at The Dalles, owing to periodical 
scarcities of pluckable tourists, the Indian would hit up 
Baker City, Pendleton, and other Oregon towns in search 
of good things, and a couple of times a year he included 
Olympia and Walla Walla in his itinerary. He sung 
somewhat smaller in those places than he did at The 
Dalles, but by keeping his eye skinned for men liable to 
call the turn on him and working quietly he generally 
succeeded in pulling apart at least one jelly-fish in each 
of the towns he took in on these off-season tours. 

“ About three months after he had left the marks of 
his fingers on the lamb’s face at The Dalles — this was in 
the fall of ’92 — he turned up one day at Walla Walla. 
He strolled around the hotel corridors with an eye to 
business, and along toward night he met with a young 
fellow named Hellen, whose father, a wealthy Chicago 
man, had recently foreclosed a mortgage on a big ranch 
about sixty miles from Walla Walla. The son, a rather 
raw young chap, had come out to look the ranch over, 
and the Indian got next to him as soon as he struck the 
town. The buck was an expert billiard player, and he 


TAKING CHANCES. 


229 


suggested a game of pin billiards to the young Hellen 
chap. He played off on the youth, and soon got him to 
betting on shots. After losing about a dozen $5 bets 
on shots, the Indian socked it to the young man from 
Chicago by betting $300 that he could execute a certain 
difficult shot. It looked like board and lodging to the 
young man that the Indian’s $300 would spin into his 
clothes, so he put up $300. The Indian made the shot 
with consummate ease and took down the pot. 

“ ‘ Fluke ! ’ said young Hellen. ‘ I’ll go you another 
$300.’ 

“ The buck got this bunch, too, without half trying. It 
would naturally be thought that the tenderfoot would 
have smelt a rat by this time. But he didn’t. He had 
plenty of money, and probably he considered it piquant to 
lose his coin to a swagger-looking, educated Indian. Any- 
how, the two were playing poker in the card-room of 
Walla Walla’s stag hotel half an hour later. 

“ There were plenty of men in that card-room who 
know that the Indian was a short-carder, but men out 
that way aren’t garrulous, and they pay a heap of at- 
tention to the job of minding their own business. The 
youth from Chicago was the merest mutt in the hands 
of the Indian, and he lost from the jump. He would 
stand pat on a full house, and the buck, drawing three 
cards, would still beat him after sky-scraping betting. 
A number of onlookers at the game may have seen the 
little side-plays of the Indian, but they only grinned at 
each other over the hopeless imbecility of the young man 
from Chicago. 

“ Finally the Indian, perhaps losing some of his dex- 
terity from the drinks he was steadily absorbing, over- 
stepped himself. He filled two pairs from the discard 


230 


TAKING CHANCES. 


and he did it clumsily. The young man with whom he 
was playing saw the move. 

“ ‘ I say, there,’ said he, ‘ what are you doing there, 
you know ? ’ pointing to the discard. ‘ Didn’t you — er — 
didn’t you make a mistake and take a card out of that 
pile? ’ 

“ The Indian, who was about $1,600 to the good, had 
cold feet, anyhow, and so he threw his hand face down- 
ward on the table and glared at the Chicago boy. The 
Chicago boy quailed. 

“ ‘ Er — well, maybe I made the mistake myself’ — he 
started to say, when a big voice cut in with : 

“ ‘ No, you didn’t son. You didn’t make any mistake 
at all. You’re up against the real thing in the way of 
a mud-skinned short-riffler, that’s all.’ 

“ A keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray-haired 
man was the speaker. As he spoke he reached down 
from behind the Indian’s chair and got two huge hands 
around the buck’s neck. The onlookers formed a clear- 
ing. The Chicago youth got himself on the outskirts of 
the bunch. 

“ ‘ About three months ago,’ said the keen-eyed man, 
dragging the huge, half-choked Indian to his feet, ‘ I saw 
you at The Dalles leave the prints of your dirty fingers 
on the face of a little whiffet you had just fleeced. I 
hankered then to confer a few personally conducted slaps 
of my own make and manufacture on your coppery jowls, 
but for some reason or other I passed the hanker up on 
that occasion. Well, the slaps are coming to you now. 
It’s better late than never, and I’m going to slap you into 
jerked beef just for luck.’ 

“ The buck was finally up against the real thing, and 
he knew it. I’ll bet that his face was whiter than mine 
is now when the big-framed man, who had the devil of 


TAKING CHANCES. 


231 


anger lurking in his eyes, suddenly loosed his right hand 
from around the Indian’s neck, and, still clutching him 
by the left, swept the loose arm back for the momentum 
and brought his heavy palm smack against the buck’s left 
cheek with a noise that sounded like the explosion of a 
charge of blasting powder. The slap rattled the Indian’s 
teeth and made his big head joggle from side to side like 
the head of an automaton. Clutching the Indian’s throat 
again then with his right hand, the big-framed man re- 
peated the slapping performance on the Indian’s right 
cheek with his left hand, and left a welt there that might 
have been made by a cat-o’-nine tails. The buck was too 
dazed, in the first place, by the suddenness of it all, to 
make a move: in the second place, he was too cowardly. 
The big-framed man — he was an expert mining engineer 
from Nevada, and his name was Varus Pryor — slapped 
the Indian’s face, first with his right and then with his 
left, for three minutes, with all his might, and then, get- 
ting behind the buck, proceeded to slap him into the 
street. With first one hand and then the other clutching 
the collar of the Indian’s coat, he slapped him out to the 
front door of the hotel. Then he gave the buck the knee 
in the small of the back, and hoisted him across the pave- 
men to the middle of the street, where the Indian spun 
around and fell for a moment. 

“ ‘ I don’t care what the Indian Bureau says about/ 
said the keen-eyed man, standing in the doorway of the 
hotel. ‘ God Almighty never intended that white men 
should stand for such alligators as that copper-mugged 
swindler, and ’ 

“ ‘ Stand clear, pard, he’s going to plug you ! ’ shouted 
a man from a second-story window of the hotel. 

“ The Indian, pretending to be hurt, and only half 
risen to his feet in the obscurity of the middle of the 


232 


TAKING CHANCES. 


street, had got his gun out, and the yell from the second 
story reached Pryor just in time. As it was, the buck 
planted a ball in the front door of the hotel, only two 
inches above the big-framed man’s head. By that time 
Pryor’s gun was working, and he drilled six holes forty- 
eight hundredths of an inch in diameter plumb through 
the swindling Umatilla’s chest. Forty-five minutes later 
he was acquitted by a coroner’s jury on the grounds of. 
self-defense and justifiable homicide — a two-in-one ver- 
dict. 

“ This,” concluded the traveling Inspector of Indian 
Agencies, “ was the finish of just one mentally-burnished 
buck Indian, and I know of several others.” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


233 


THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER. 


Story of a Seance at Stud Betzveen Two Oregon Con- 
tractors and the Close Finish Thereof. 

“ Somehow or another, I don’t like the game of stud,” 
said a Government contractor from Portland, Ore. “ It’s 
too much of a strain to play stud. There are too many 
heart-breaking and headache-producing possibilities at- 
tached to the mysterious card the other fellow has got 
in the hole. I’d rather take the chance of guessing what 
all of his five card are than to engage in the perspiring 
business of trying to figure out the horrible possible value 
of the one blind card, especially if the four cards he 
has exposed are capable of being amplified into a hand of 
the topper kind by the addition of that bit of pasteboard 
in the pit. I can’t get away from the impression that it’s 
like putting all of your money in one bet to play stud. 
Now, there’s a good deal to the game of draw besides 
mere bluffing. In fact, bluffing is almost an obsolete fea- 
ture of the game among the experts at draw poker. The 
man that plays his hand in draw will beat the bluffer ev- 
ery time in year-in-and-year-out play. 

“ The folks out my way had the stud-poker fad pret- 
ty badly about eight or ten years ago, but now they’ve 
got back to their first love and stick pretty generally to 
the game of California draw — which, by the way, is a 
whole lot different game from the draw you people back 
here play. For example, a man sprung a thing on me 
last night that he called a pat straight. I had three aces, 
but he said his pat straight topped me, and as he had his 


234 


TAKING CHANCES. 


gang with him, I had to look pleasant and let him rake 
in the money. If a man out on the Slope were to talk 
pat straight to a party of aborigines, they’d conduct him 
to the Alcalde’s calaboose and have him locked up to 
await a commission’s decision as to his responsibility. 

“ But to get back to the period when the stud-poker 
fad got hold of us out in Oregon. I was a witness of a 
heart-disease finish of a game of that kind a few years 
back that caused me to decide that ordinary draw was 
good enough for my money right along. It was right 
after the big fire that ate up the best part of The Dalles 
eight years ago. As soon as the building contractors of 
Portland got word to the effect that The Dalles was being 
licked up by the flames, they hopped aboard trains and 
made for The Dalles with an eye to business. They knew 
that The Dalles, which was chiefly a wooden layout be- 
fore the fire, would be immediately rebuilt in brick and 
stone, and that the contractors who got on the scene of 
ruin first would scoop in the bulk of the business. Two 
of these contractors were — well, I’ll have to side-step on 
their names, for they’re two of the most prominent citi- 
zens out on the banks of the Willamette, and both of 
’em walk up the middle aisle on Sunday as if they never 
heard of such a thing as stud poker. Both of them are 
Irishmen, which is why neither of ’em could see that he 
was licked on this occasion. 

“ One of them, we’ll say, was Dan Carmody, and the 
other was Tim Feeney. Carmody got into The Dalles 
a few hours ahead of Feeney, and he made those few 
hours count. He went around to the business men of 
The Dalles who had been wiped out by the fire and asked 
them what they wanted with him. They hadn’t burned 
the wires up telegraphing for Carmody to come to them, 
but Carmody about convinced them that they had done 


TAKING CHANCES. 


235 


just this thing, and he began making estimates for ’em 
with pencil and pad. He corralled them in the one re- 
maining hall of the town and told them to go ahead and 
just let him know what they wanted of him. Carmody’s 
cyclonic nerve appealed to their fancy, and they found 
themselves juggling with the figures Carmody was put- 
ting down on his pad. Three hours after Carmody struck 
The Dalles from Portland he had in his inside coat pocket 
rough drafts of contracts to build a new stone business 
block, including a theater, and also to erect a large, ornate 
hotel, the cost of both buildings to be not more than $350,- 
000. Oh, Carmody was a hustler all right. 

“ He had an idea that his friend and business rival, 
Tom Feeney, would be down on the next train from Port- 
land, and he went to the station to receive him. Sure 
enough, Feeney stepped off the next incoming train. Car- 
mody had his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat 
and . a big cigar stuck aggrivatingly in his teeth when 
Feeney ran into him. Feeney’s jaw fell. 

“ When did you get in, Dan ? ’ he asked Carmody. 

“ ‘ Three hours ago,’ replied Dan, with a grin. 

“ Feeney made a funny motion, as if to jump aboard a 
train that was just pulling out for Portland, but he came 
back to his cheerful rival and asked him : 

“ ‘ Anything doing, Dan ? ’ 

“ Carmody executed two very shifty jig steps in token 
of his happiness, and then reassumed his dignity. 

“ ‘ Well, I’ll tell you how it is, Tim,’ he said. ‘ These 
people here are pretty badly chewed up, y’ see. Now, 
maybe they’ll be wanting to rebuild a few chicken coops 
and outhouses — I don’t know but what they will. Now, 
there’s a chance for you, Tim.’ 

“ Feeney didn’t look very merry over this. Says he : 

‘ Chicken coops, is it ? And who’s going to throw up the 


236 


TAKING CHANCES. 


new business building and the opera house, and the hotel, 
and the like ? ’ 

“ Carmody was laying for that question. He drew the 
two rough contracts out of his pocket. 

“ Looks as if I’m It over here, don’t it, Tim? ’ he asked 
Feeney, as the latter read over the two contracts with a 
gloomy countenance. ‘ Nice work, hey? That’s what you 
get for monkeying around in bed all the morning, Tim. 
Why don’t you be like me, now ? I never go to bed,’ etc. 
Carmody couldn’t refrain from working that nice edge 
of his, and strung the dismal-faced Feeney for keeps. 
Feeney finally walked away, the picture of dejection, to 
see if there were any crumbs to be picked up in the way 
of rebuilding. He found, however, that all of the business 
men that had not already been got by Carmody were dis- 
posed to wait awhile for the disposition of insurance, and 
he didn’t get a smell of the rebuilding. He walked around 
the still-smokihg Dalles for the remainder of the day, 
figuring on how much Carmody was going to make out of 
his two big contracts. Carmody himself started in to open 
wine by way of celebration, so that by the time the night 
boat for Portland was ready to leave her slip he was pretty 
comfortable. Both he and Feeney took the night boat and I 
happened to be going down to Portland on the boat my- 
self that night. Feeney had taken the bowl himself a bit 
during the day to assuage his depression over his lack of 
success, and he was pretty mellow when the boat pulled 
out. Carmody, with about a dozen quarts under his belt, 
dug Feeney up as soon as he got aboard, and the two 
walked up and down the main deck, arm in arm, Car- 
mody keeping up his merciless stringing of his friend. 
Then Carmody heard the clatter of the chips in a $10 
limit game of stud that had already started in the card- 
room, and suggested a two-handed game of stud to 


TAKING CHANCES. 


237 


Feeney, with some accommodating non-player to deal 
the cards. Feeney was agreeable, and Carmody, seeing 
that I wasn’t mixing up with the game in the card-room, 
asked me if 1 wouldn’t dish ’em out for an hour or so of 
stud between himself and Feeney. It was to be $100 
limit and $10 ante. The two men didn’t get up to the 
$100 limit at all until after they had played for half an 
hour, and Carmody was $600 or $700 winner. Then 
Feeney found himself with kings up on tens in front of 
him and a card that he either liked or elected to bluff 
on in the hole, while Carmody had three aces face up and 
a card in the hole that he appeared to think a heap of, 
judging from the way he bet. 

“ ‘ These kings of mine,’ said Feeney, with the trans- 
parent air of a man making a win-out bluff, ‘ may not 
look very pretty alongside those three bullets of yours, 
Carmody, but they suit me, at that. You can have a peep 
at the blind for $100.’ 

“ ‘ I wouldn’t think of paying so little money for the 
privilege of gazing at such a good card as you think you’ve 
got, Tim,’ said Carmody. ‘ Now, having already got you 
beat on the show-up, I guess I can afford to charge you 
another $100 for a glimpse of the other one-spot that I’ve 
got in the pit.’ 

“ This kind of talk went on for ten minutes, the two 
men raising each other back at $100 a clip until 'there was 
$3800 in the pot. Feeney talked and acted like a bluffer 
all the time, but nevertheless Carmody began to suspect 
that, after all, Tim might have something in the hole 
to beat him. So when Carmody called Feeney’s last 
$100 raise the latter knew that his friend with the con- 
tracts in his pocket didn’t have any four aces, and he just 
scooped in the pot before he showed up what he had in 
the hole. It was the third king, completing a nice full 


23B 


TAKING CHANCES. 


hand, that Feeney had in the hole, and the money was his. 
Carmody turned up a deuce, that he had tried to make 
the bluff was another ace, and looked properly crestfallen. 

“ ‘ For a Mulligan that knows so little about business as 
you, Tim,’ said Carmody, ‘ you’ve got a mighty crafty way 
about you of making it appear that you’re bluffing. We’ll 
try it again, and from now on I’ll know that when you 
look and talk like you’re bluffing you’ve got the hand.’ 

“ Both men had been ringing up the steward’s boy a 
good deal, during the progress of the game, and they 
were not, therefore, any more sober than was necessary. 
On the very next hand Feeney took a big hunk out of his 
rival. He had three deuces face up and Carmody had 
three jacks on top. Feeney began to bet $100 with so 
much natty confidence that Carmody decided that his 
compatriot was adopting new tactics in bluffing, and, quite 
naturally, with his three nice-looking jacks plainly in 
sight, he not only stood every raise but raised back the 
limit every time. 

“ ‘ I figure it this way,’ said Carmody, abstractedly to 
himself, when there was nigh onto $4000 in chips in the 
center of the baize. * This Harp from Connemara across 
the table can’t turn two of these tricks one right after 
the other. The percentage of the game is against such 
a thing as that. And he’s just perky and sassy because 
he thinks I’m on to his first exhibited system of bluffing. 
Tim, another $100, if you want to feast your Mulligan 
blue eyes on this other knave of mine in the hole.’ 

And $100, said Feeney, with all the confidence in 

life. 

“ Thus they went on for fully fifteen minutes, until the 
proportions of the pot were really alarming, considering 
that neither of the men was a millionaire or anything like 
it. There was $7200 in the middle of the table when Car- 


TAKING CHANCES. 


239 


mody wilted. He attempted to put his wilt on philan- 
thropic grounds. 

With a drink or two in you, Tim/ he said, * you’re an 
incautious and unwise citizen for a man humping along 
toward 60 years of age ’ — Feeney wasn’t more than 48, 
and didn’t look that. ‘ And Mrs. Feeney’s been telling 
my wife for the past twelve years that she’s aching to 
have a look at the old sod, but that her man Tim con- 
siders himself too poor for the journey. So I won’t be 
the means of casting gloom around your household, Tim. 
I see your $100, and what’s the color of that cheap ten or 
eight spot you’ve got in the hole ? ’ 

“ Feeney turned over his fourth deuce and hauled down 
the money. That sort o’ took Carmody’s nerve and he 
had to have several big drinks of the hard stuff to set 
him right again. While he was drinking Feeney took up 
the end of the stringing that Carmody had abandoned. 

“ 4 How much do you figure you’ll pull down from those 
two contracts, Dan ? ’ he asked his rival in business. 

“ ‘ About $75,000,’ answered Carmody quickly, * which 
is just about $75,000 more than The Dalles fire has been 
worth to you, eh, Tim? * 

“ ‘ What’s the use of depleting the capital that you’ve 
already got in bank?’ asked Feeney, with a twinkle in 
his eye. ‘ Just play me stud for those contracts. I'll 
say they’re worth $60,000, and I’m good for that if I’m 
good for a cent.’ 

Carmody studied for a moment. He was already out 
$11,000 in this poker game, and he wanted that money 
back. The idea of playing his contracts against Feeney’s 
hard cash rather appealed to his imagination, which was 
not less active on account of the huge quantity of stuff 
he had been drinking. 

“ ‘ Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do to give you a start in 


240 


TAKING CHANCES. 


life, Tim,’ said Carmody finally. ‘ You've got my checks 
for $11,000. Supposing you call those two contracts worth 
$70,000, return me those checks for $11,000, and say that 
the two contracts Fve got in my pocket are worth $59,000 
as they stand. Then I’ll give you a chance to take as 
big a fall out of the contracts as you think you can.’ 

“ That idea suited Feeney to a T, and I stood by to 
begin dealing again. The two contracts were pushed 
into the center of the table by Carmody, and it was an 
additional part of my business, besides dealing, to make 
note of the changing value of the contracts as the game 
progressed. 

“ Well, the game continued to go Feeney’s way, and 
Carmody just looked at his contracts as Feeney began 
to edge them nearer and nearer to his end of the table. 
Carmody, while he figured that the contracts were so 
much velvet, didn’t look happy when Feeney picked $12,- 
000 more out of them, leaving their value to Dan only 
an approximate $47,000, but he played on in the hope of 
better luck. Finally a queer hand came around. Car- 
mody caught two queens, an eight and a seven. So did 
Feeney. This thing made Carmody mad. 

“ ‘ Of all the niggering out I ever saw,’ he exclaimed, 
‘ this is the worst. But it’s about time I had the best of 
it when it comes to pure bull-head luck.’ 

“ So he bet the limit that he had a better card in the 
hole than Feeney. Feeney came back at him every clip, 
and when I interposed a remonstrance over the heftiness 
of the game, expressing the opinion that both of them 
would probably be sorry they had gone into the thing 
so heavily when the gray dawn came around, they said 
they knew they’d be sorry, and went right ahead. 

“ ‘ This is surely the hottest case of a stand-off in a 
deal in stud that I’ve seen yet,’ said Feeney, 4 and I 


TAKING CHANCES. 


241 


shouldn’t be surprised if we had to split the pot when the 
show-down comes. But I’m as good as you, Carmody, 
on the four that show, and I’m with you all night if you’re 
going to keep it up that long.’ 

“ When my tab of the shifting value of the contracts 
showed that Carmody’s interest therein was only an even 
$30,000, Carmody looked up at the ceiling of the card- 
room and reflected. 

“ ‘ Here,’ he said, ‘ is where I get my contracts back 
and break even, or where I have to go into partnership 
with a slow-witted Irishman on those buildings at The 
Dalles. Feeney, I call you.’ 

“ Feeney turned over a six pot. Carmody’s card in 
the hole was a five. Feeney was the possessor of a half 
interest in Carmody’s fine contracts at The Dalles, and 
that’s how it happened that these two builders, who had 
always gone it singly and alone, built up The Dalles in 
partnership. They got along so well together at The Dalles 
work that three years later they went into a general con- 
tracting partnership and they’ve been getting rich ever 
since. But it was their stud game on The Dalles boat 
that induced me to conclude that old-fashioned draw 
was good enough for me.” 


242 


TAKING CHANCES. 


THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN. 


With the Result That His Clothes Finally Went into a 
Pot, and Fortune Scowled upon Him . 


“ When a man arrives at that pitch where he'll bet the 
clothes off his back over a jackpot, it's about up to him 
to let the game of draw alone, in my opinion/' said a 
traveling special agent of the Treasury Department. 
“ I’m talking about a game of draw that happened last 
fall down in the Territory, on the south bank of the 
Canadian River, in the Chickasaw country, between four 
St. Louis men. They were on their annual hunting trip 
down there. They were well-known business men of old 
St. Loo, pals of a half a lifetime, and they had been after 
bear, deer, feathered game, or any old thing shootable 
down in the Territory every year together for more than 
a decade. They always played poker on these outings, 
too, and the bank president always got all the money. 
The other three couldn’t do anything whatever with the 
bank president’s brand of poker. They’d been digging 
at him on these excursions for ten years, trying every 
conceivable scheme to get his money, and even playing 
in combination against him, but when it came time to 
strike camp he always had all the money in the crowd, 
owned all the camp fixtures, and served out smoking 
tobacco to his three chums in a lordly way only when 
he felt generous. It made ’em hot, but they had to ac- 
cept his alms if they wanted to smoke. 

“ The three of ’em determined when the party set out 
from St. Louis in their special car last autumn that the 


TAKING CHANCES. 


243 


bank president wasn’t going to come back from the hunt ? 
ing trip with all the money, even if they had to leave his 
bones to bleach on the banks of the Canadian. They de- 
clared together that the bank president’s sassiness for 
the remainder of the year after eating them up at poker 
down in the Territory was something unbearable, and 
they didn’t intend to stand for it any more. 

“ They played a little poker in their car on the trip 
down from St. Louis, and this gave one of the three con- 
spirators a chance to get hold of the bank president’s two 
decks of cards. The conspirators carefully marked these 
two decks of cards — marked ’em both just the same way 
— and then, during the temporary absence of the bank 
president in another part of the car, he elaborately ex- 
plained to his two companions in infamy how he had 
done it, the three going over the bank president’s two 
decks in detail, so as to master the markings. Then the 
two decks were returned furtively to the bank president’s 
grip, and the rest of the playing on the trip down was 
done with ordinary packs. They never played big on 
these journeys, anyhow, but reserved their stiff games for 
the bad-weather days in camp. 

“ When they got to their point of debarkation on the 
line, they left their car on a siding and struck out for 
their regular camp, about seventy-five miles from the 
railroad. They stuck to the bagging of pelts and antlers 
for a week or so ; then a threatening morning came along 
and the bank president suggested poker. 

“ ‘ What’s the use ? ’ they all demurred, eying the 
bank president gloomily. ‘ You always get the whole 
works, and then you’re insufferable for the rest of the year. 
We don’t think you’re on the level, anyhow.’ 

“ ‘ Oh, I’ll give you all a chance this time,’ said the 
bank president, grinning. ‘ I won’t be hard upon you. 


244 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Then, you see, the more you fellows play with me in the 
game, why, the more you learn about poker, and I’m sure 
the instruction you get helps you a lot in your games with 
the dubs up in St. Loo. I’m noted, anyhow, for my gen- 
erosity in giving others the benefit of my wisdom.’ 

“ ‘ Well/ said the spokesman and arch-conspirator of 
the three, ‘ we’ll play a little game of table-stakes, but 
checks don’t go; this thing of the three of us writing 
you checks that keep your large family in opulence for a 
year is ’ 

“ ‘ All right, let it be table stakes,’ replied the bank pres- 
ident amiably. ‘ I’m not a man to take bread out of the 
mouths of the impoverished,’ and with more of such badi- 
nage the game started. 

“ An ordinary deck was used at first — a deck out of 
the satchel of the real estate man, the infamous member 
of the conspiring trio who had marked the bank presi- 
dent’s cards. The bank president, as usual, had all of 
the luck from the jump. He seemed to rake down every 
pot. The three glared at him and made all sorts of in- 
sinuating remarks about the phenomenal luck of the bank 
president that had continued for a dozen years. The 
bank president regarded them indulgently, and told them 
they’d learn the elementary principles of the game after 
they’d camped with him for another ten years or so. 

“ After an hour’s play the bank president beat the real 
estate man — the other two had dropped out — out of a stiff 
jackpot with a pair of better threes, and the real estate 
man simulated great rage and tore the deck of cards into 
many pieces. 

“ ‘ For heaven’s sake, give us another deck ! ’ he ex- 
claimed, passionately, with a furtive wink at his two com- 
panions in crime. 

“ The bank president reached back of him, collared 


TAKING CHANCES. 


245 


his grip, and produced one of his decks with a bland 
smile. They surely were scientifically marked, for this 
bank president had an eye in his head, and he didn’t get 
next. 

Well, we’ll try one of my decks,’ said the bank presi- 
dent. 4 Of course, it’ll be a shame to plug you with a 
new musket — none of my decks has been riffled yet — 
but maybe my unfamiliarity with the range of the fresh 
gun’ll give you all a show at me.’ Oh, this bank presi- 
dent was arrogant in victory, all right. 

“ Well, he wasn’t one, two, three, from then on, of 
course. It was done mighty well, and not so as to ex- 
cite the bank president’s suspicions in the least, but he 
found himself topped practically every time, and his face 
grew long. He was quite heavily in the hole at the end 
of an hour’s play with his own deck. 

“ 4 Oh, we’ve got on to your bluffing style of play, that’s 
all,’ said the real estate man complaisantly. 4 You just 
had us scared together for the past ten years, but you’re 
as clear a proposition now as a mountain creek. I al- 
ways thought you were more or less of a counterfeit and 
a four-flusher, anyhow, didn’t you, fellows ? ’ 

44 Of course the other two thought so, too, and the bank 
president’s brow clouded as, time after time, after he had 
bet hard on hands that looked to him to be worth every 
dollar he ventured on them, he found himself topped, nig- 
gered out. The real estate man increased the bank 
president’s worry by flashing a nine-high straight against 
the financier’s eight-high straight, and then the latter did 
a card-tearing stunt himself. He ripped his deck into 
ribbons with a running commentary of strong talk. 

44 4 It must be a rank deck that’ll permit of a set of 
amateur skates like you fellows putting it on me,’ he said. 
Then he dug into his grip again and produced the other 


246 


TAKING CHANCES. 


'phony deck, his three companions warning him against 
letting his angry passions rise, and so on. 

“ The three conspirators let the bank president pull 
down a couple of sizable pots with this deck just for the 
sake of enjoying his renewed impertinence, and then they 
went at him good and hard. At the end of an hour 
they had the bank president’s supply of ready cash — about 1 
$500 — badly wilted. He had only $100 left when it came 
around the real estate man’s turn to dish out a jackpot 
round. The bank president was under the gun, as they 
say out there of the man who’s to the left of the dealer 
of a jackpot, and he cracked the pot open for the limit. 
The other two stayed, and when it got up to the real es- 
tate man he raised it the limit. This knocked his two 
confederates out of it — as a matter of fact the arch-con- 
spirator winked them out of it — but the limit was just 
what the bank president wanted with his four bullets. 

“ The bank president took one card with a crafty, I’ll- 
make-him-think-I’m-four-flushing expression of counte- 
nance. The real estate man, with a queen-high sequence 
flush of hearts remarked that the bunch he had was good 
enough for him. Then they got to betting, and it was 
no time at all before the bank president had done the 
apology act with the remains of his $500. He pulled 
out a check-book then and was fumbling around for a 
fountain pen when the real estate man called him down. 

Not on your life,’ he said. ‘ Agreement was that 
checks don’t go, you’ll remember.’ 

But this hand ’ the bank president started to say. 

“ ‘ Makes no difference about that hand,’ interrupted 
the real estate man. ‘ Agreement was for table stakes.’ 

But, great Caesar, man,’ pleaded the bank president. 

‘ I want to get some kind of a decent run for this hand. 
Why, I’d bet the clothes right off my back on it.’ 


taking chances. 


Ml 

Well/ said the real estate man calmly, ‘ we didn’t 
make any stipulation about clothes and personal posses- 
sions, and you can get the clothes off your back if you 
want to. But no checks/ 

Well/ said the bank president, peeling off a big soli- 
taire ring, ‘ this stone’s worth $400, and I’ll raise you that 
much/ 

“ ‘ I see you/ said the real estate man. ‘ What else have 
you got that I can raise against ? ’ 

Well/ replied the bank president, ‘ this watch is 
worth $300 and ’ 

Skate it in,’ interrupted the real estate man. ‘ Raise 
you $300 then, your valuation of the ticker/ 

Dog-gone the luck,’ said the bank president, ‘ I don’t 
want to call you. I know I’ve got you beat. I’d be 
willing to bet my corduroys, shoes and hat that I’ve got 
you soaked, for ’ 

“ * Rush ’em to the center, then/ calmly replied the real 
estate man. * Supposing I appraise the corduroys, shoes 
and hat at $50 for the bundle. That satisfactory ? ’ 

“ 4 It’s got to be,’ replied the bank president mourn- 
fully. 

“ ‘ All right, then, put ’em in the pot and I’ll consider 
that you’ve called me,’ said the real estate man. 

“ The bank president stood up, peeled off his coat and 
waistcoat and hunting breeches and dropped them on the 
blanket that served for a table. Then he removed his 
pair of high hunting shoes and placed them on top of the 
clothes, and tossed his fore-and-aft cap on the heap. Then 
he sat down in his underclothes, picked up his four aces, 
and said: 

“ ‘ Now, dern you, put down your little straight or full 
and I’ll show you what you’re up against/ 

“ The wealthy depositors of the St. Louis bank of 


24S 


TAKING CHANCES. 


which he was the head would have enjoyed seeing his 
face when the real estate man calmly laid down his se- 
quence flush and hauled down the pot, togs and all, with- 
out a word. 

“ ‘ You’re a good thing, ain’t you? ’ said the other two, 
who had been taking the play in with a positive knowledge 
of how it was going to come out. 

“ The bank president looked pretty forlorn as the three 
sat there and guyed him. Finally he stood up. 

“ ‘ Well,’ said he to the real estate man. ‘ I’ll just write 
you a check for the fifty you allowed on those togs of 
mine,’ and he started to reach for the clothes in order to 
dress himself. The real estate man held the suit, shoes 
and hat out of the bank president’s reach. 

“ ‘ These things ain’t for sale,’ he said. ‘ They’ll all 
just about fit me,’ trying on the hat, ‘ and I guess I’ll 
just hang on to them as a sort of No. 2 outfit.’ 

“ ‘ But, great Scott, man ! ’ exclaimed the bank presi- 
dent, ‘ don’t you know that I haven’t got another stitch 
in camp — that that rig-out’s the only one I brought from 
the car ? ’ 

“ ‘ Too bad,’ said the real estate man. 4 You hadn’t 
ought to’ve skated the togs into the pot, then. Sorry, 
old man, but honest, I really couldn’t think of parting 
with these things for any amount of money. I’ve only 
got one suit along with me, too, and only one hat and 
pair of shoes, and if they get wet what am I going to do? 
Got to have a change, you know. I really feel very 
deeply for you in your predicament, and so do the other 
boys — don’t you fellows? — but I need this outfit in my 
business.’ 

“ The other two men nodded their heads in grave en- 
dorsement of this stand and the bank president frothed at 
the mouth. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


249 


“ * What the devil do you expect me to do, you blamed 
idiot ? ’ he shouted at the real estate man. 1 Stand around 
the tent and shiver, or cut across the trail in my under- 
clothes for the car to get another set of togs ? ’ 

“ 4 1 wish I could think of some plan to help you out, 
old man,’ answered the real estate man with commisera- 
tion in his countenance, ‘ but I really couldn’t think, under 
any consideration, of giving up these things,’ and he made 
the suit, the shoes and the hat up into a neat bundle as 
he spoke. Just then one of the other men, who had been 
prowling outside, same running into the tent breathless. 

“ ‘ Say, fellows,’ he exclaimed, ‘ there’s some fresh bear 
tracks right over there in the clearing,’ and he grabbed 
his gun. So did the other two. The bank president 
made as if to pick up his rifle, too, when his eye fell on 
his lack of raiment. By that time the real estate man 
was fifty yards from the tent, at a lope with the other two. 

“ ‘ Hey, come back here, you confounded cut-throat ! 9 
the financier yelled after the real estate man, who had 
the bank president’s clothes, shoes and hat slung in a 
neat bundle over his shoulder. But the three men were 
out of voice range in a jiffy. 

“ They came back, beaming, along toward nightfall, 
with the pelts of two nice young black bears. They 
found the bank president moping around, wrapped up in 
a blanket and sulphurizing the air when they reached the 
tent. Then they sat around him in a circle and ex- 
pressed their sincere sympathy with him and told him his 
case was only one more instance of the awful evil of 
gambling. After supper and a pipe they all turned in, 
leaving the bank president still sulking and uttering terri- 
ble maledictions under his breath. 

“ The real estate man and the other two went out early 
the next morning — the bank president’s clothes along with 


250 


TAKING CHANCES. 


them — and when they got back they found the blanketed 
financier on the verge of apoplexy from sheer wrath. The 
real estate man then made a great show of charity by giv- 
ing up the togs, and the bank president was in a state 
of good-nature by the time camp was struck. The three 
conspirators united in a letter of explanation, inclosing 
all of their winnings, to the bank president when they 
got back to St. Louis, and when the bank president got 
the letter and his disgorged losings he was most tickled to 
death and instantly became as perky and impudent as ever. 

“ ‘ I knew you couldn’t have done it if you’d played on 
the square,’ said he, the first time he met them. ‘ Wait 
till next year, that’s all.’ ” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


251 


THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL 
MOMENTS. 


Wherein It Is Shown That It Is Easy Enough to Be Cool 
When Playing with Another Man’s Money . 

“ I happen to know that a considerable number of the 
most famous professional gamblers in this country made 
their reputation with other men’s money,” said a Rocky 
Mountain man of large experience. “ These men have 
had their names heralded far and wide as the stakers 
of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, upon the 
turn of a card, and innumerable yarns have been spun as 
to their cool, John Oakhurst-like manner of scooping in 
a table full of money upon the smashing of a bank, or of 
calmly lighting their cigars and strolling out when for- 
tune went against them. So far as the stories themselves 
are concerned, some of them are undoubtedly right; but 
all of them leave out the very essential fact that the men 
were simply players of other men’s money — ‘table touts,’ 
we call ’em out West. I suppose it is a reasonable propo- 
sition that it is a whole lot easier to risk another man’s 
money at the table than it is to endanger your own. Of all 
the men I am telling you about hardly a one had enough 
luck at the tables to keep himself warm when putting up 
his own coin ; perhaps it was owing to the extreme caution 
of their play under these conditions "and the far greater 
strain involved in the hazarding of their own money. 
They could take another man’s money — the money of a 
man who probably did not know the difference between 
00 and 33 in a wheel layout, but who could afford to 


2$2 


TAKING CHANCES. 


venture almost an unlimited amount of money on a game 
— and in at least eight cases out of ten they could run 
the initial stake into a pile that would mean for them- 
selves a rake-off or percentage of thousands or tens of 
thousands ; but in venturing their own money I have seen 
few of them who were any good in the matter of keeping 
their nerve under rein. 

“ Back in the sixties Tom Naseby was generally con- 
sidered the most dangerous man at a faro table on the 
Pacific Slope. Bank after bank, from Portland to San 
Diego, went to the wall under his system of play — or lack 
of system, I ought to say — and at the end the San Fran- 
cisco banks shut him out altogether, so that he was com- 
pelled to start a layout of his own. Among Naseby’s 
smashes that were famous on the coast was that of 
breaking Byron McGregor’s Kearny street institution to 
the tune of $150,000; of hitting up Tillottson’s $10,000 
limit game in San Francisco for $100,000 and closing the 
doors, and of banging Ned Jordan’s bank in Portland for 
$125,000, all within the space of three months. Yet 
Naseby told me himself that on none of these plays was 
he venturing a sou marque of his own money — that it 
had all been handed over to him, the initial stakes for each 
big play, that is, by Ralston, the millionaire San Fran- 
cisco banker, who committed suicide. Out of each win- 
ning Naseby of course got a big cut of the money, for 
Ralston went into the thing for the sport of it and was a 
very generous man. Naseby, who belonged to the tribe of 
savers for a rainy day, hung onto these rolls. Naseby 
played faro with just about as much skill as a Zulu wields 
a war club, and he frankly confessed that his coups were 
simply the result of unlimited confidence and unlimited 
backing allied to bullhead luck. 

“ Frank Burbridge, the most famous poker player that 


TAKING CHANCES. 


253 


Portland has ever brought out, was another man who 
made his reputation as a gambler upon the strength of 
the vast winnings he hauled out upon stakes furnished by 
wealthy men. Some of these rich backers of Burbridge 
remained behind the screen and only received Frank’s 
reports as to how he made out in the games for which 
they staked him, but others came out into the open and 
sat alongside Burbridge when he was playing with their 
money — not for the purpose of watching him, for he was 
strictly on the level, but just for the fun of watching the 
game. One of the big contractors for the building of the 
Oregon Short Line, a man worth many millions of dol- 
lars, was one of Burbridge’s clients who liked to watch 
the expert poker player play the hands. He was con- 
stantly staking Burbridge for big games with dangerous 
opponents. If Frank won, all right; he got most of the 
money himself. If he lost, all right, too; the contractor 
simply went into the thing for the mental distraction it 
afforded him. 

“ I was a witness of one of those big games in which 
Burbridge engaged with a stake furnished by the con- 
tractor. It was played at the old Willamette House in 
Portland, and it was a two-handed game. The other 
player was a very wealthy Portland man who was said 
to have made a big pot of money by simply making the 
suggestion that he intended to parallel the Oregon Short 
Line. This rich man thought he knew how to play poker 
until his friend, the contractor of the Short Line who 
was Burbridge’s staker, put him up against the latter — 
partly for the interest of watching the game, and partly, 
perhaps, for other reasons. Anyhow, the Portland man 
had a whole heap of an opinion of what he knew about 
poker, and played the game incessantly for pastime. He 
had never happened to sit in a game with Burbridge, and 


254 


TAKING CHANCES. 


Burbridge’s backer finally suggested to the Portland man 
that he have a try at what he could do with the man 
who was known to be the most expert player of poker in 
the Northwest. 

“ ‘ Oh, he’s a professional,’ said the Portland man, 

‘ and I don’t play cards with professionals in a contest of 
skill such as I see you want to make this. I play with 
’em once in a while just to study their games, but not 
for big money. I wouldn’t trust them under such cir- 
cumstances.’ 

“ ‘ Well, you trust me, I suppose, don’t you ? ’ said the 
contractor. 

“ ‘ Certainly,’ was the reply. 

“‘All right, my friend,’ said the contractor, ‘ I’d just 
like to find out to satisfy my own curiosity how good you 
can play poker. I don’t amount to much at it myself, 
and I don’t think you’re any better than I am. Very 
well. You sit into a game with Burbridge, and I’ll 
deal all the hands myself, and sit by to see fair play — 
though Burbridge plays just as fairly as I would myself 
under the same circumstances. Does that proposition 
suit you ? ’ 

“ * Yes,’ said the Portland man, ‘ I’d just like to give 
Burbridge a whirl under those circumstances.’ 

“ So the game was arranged. Four or five of us 
were invited around to the old Willamette House to 
look on while the game progressed. The two 
men sat down to the game about 8 o’clock at night. The 
Portland man — I will call him Tun well, which is pretty 
close to his right name — had occasionally met Burbridge, 
who was a very smooth, urbane sort of chap of thirty, 
and so they nodded good-naturedly to each other when 
Tun well came into the room. The contractor was on 
hand with his check-book. The conditions were simply 


TAKING CHANCES. 


255 


that the contractor was to deal each of the hands, and 
then retire from the table with the remainder of the deck 
until the call for cards. Then he was to dish out what 
cards were called for, and get away from the table again 
until the hand was played. The rest of us were to sit 
around, with the privilege of having peeps at the hands. 
Tun well was to have the privilege of asking the advice of 
any of us as to proper plays, as Burbridge was to be per- 
mitted to refer hands that heavily involved the contrac- 
tor’s purse to the latter — not to seek advice, but simply to 
inform him what he intended to do in the play. The 
game was to be without limit, and the chips were worth 
$5> an d $50. 

“ So the game began. Tunwell soon proved himself 
a pretty cool man. He didn’t put up a stingy game, but 
he simply had the proper sort of regard for the worth 
of the cards the contractor dished out to him, and he 
played them right, as we who were watching the game 
and had a chance of seeing both hands soon discovered. 
Two or three times in the early part of the game I, for 
one, thought he was a bit overcautious, but in general 
his line of play was away above the average. Tunwell 
was a big, gray-eyed man of the type that is jammed 
full of well-controlled nerve, and he held himself on this 
night in additional check because he knew that he was up 
against a hard proposition. The play at first didn’t 
amount to much — fifty or hundred-dollar bets occasion- 
ally — and both men seemed to be sparring for information 
on the style of each other’s play. Tunwell finally decided 
upon a bluff. He had a nine high ,and he went up to 
$500 on it. Burbridge laid down. This was pretty good 
for Tunwell, but he had the sense to show no exulta- 
tion. Now, after making a thing like that go through, 
most men would keep on bluffing until called when on 


256 


TAKING CHANCES. 


steep and craggy ground, but Tunwell didn’t. He re- 
sumed the system of playing for what his hands 
were worth. This he stuck to for half an hour or 
so, when he was $800 ahead of the game and then 
he made another bluff on a pair of queens. Burbridge, 
who had three aces, laid down, and Tunwell’s pile was 
amplified by $1,000. 

“ ‘ That was a cold bluff, Burbridge,’ said Tunwell. 

“ ‘ Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Burbridge. ‘ There was 
too much confidence in your eye for that.’ Which shows 
that even a great poker player is as likely as anybody to 
get mixed when it comes to studying eyes in a game. 

“ After a while Burbridge caught a pat full house, and 
Tunwell filled a still better full hand. It was Tunwell’s 
bet, and he went $1,000 on it. Burbridge laid down — 
wherein it was plain to be seen that he was a man who 
possessed that indefinable thing, the poker player’s 
‘ hunch.’ 

“ Now, all these plays I’m telling you about were sim- 
ply part of the warming up. The two men were simply 
studying each other. They didn’t really begin to play 
poker until two hours after they sat down. 

“ Then the contractor dealt Burbridge a promising set 
:of threes, and gave Tunwell a neat two pairs, with aces 
on top. Tunwell filled with another ace, and Burbridge 
got nothing worth mentioning in the draw, so that his 
three nines didn’t look very big to us against an ace full. 
It was Burbridge’s bet. He was one of those men who 
lay their cards down on the table and look up at the ceil- 
ing before making a bet. 

“ ‘ Five thousand dollars,’ said he finally, still looking 
up at the ceiling reflectively, and the contractor, who had 
seen Tunwell’s draw, winced a bit. 


TAKING CHANCES. 


257 

“ Tunwell looked at him pretty hard and scanned his 
hand. He raised him $5,000. 

And $5,000/ said Burbridge, quietly. Now, the 
contractor was a pretty game sort of man, but we could 
see that he felt badly over this. 

“ Then Tunwell laid down. Burbridge’s bluff worked. 
Of course, not until after the game did we tell him what 
Tunwell held that time, and when we did he said : 

“ ‘ I felt from the first, before I made a bet that he 
had me beat — but the bigger a man’s hand, the easier it is 
to bluff him out of the money.’ Queer remark, wasn’t 
it? 

“ Tunwell kept his nerve like a major after this heavy 
fall, and we couldn’t see the slightest sign of faltering 
in his style of play. The game went back to the $100 
basis, and was comparatively uninteresting for an hour or 
so. In the course of the play during this time Tunwell 
caught four queens pat — a very remarkable thing — and 
got 50 only out of the hands. But unlike what most 
poker players would do under such circumstances, he 
didn’t throw down the hand face upward on the table 
with an oath. He wasn’t that kind of poker player. 

“ Just about midnight both men simultaneously decided 
upon a bluff — and it’s not often that men happen to do 
this in a two-handed poker game ; when they do, some- 
thing always drops. Both men stood pat. There wasn’t 
a pair in either hand. It was a choice experience to note 
the offhand way with which Burbridge made the first 
bet on this pat hand of his. 

“ ‘ Ten thousand dollars,’ said he, and his backer, the 
contractor, went to the window, raised it, and poked his 
head out for air. 

“ Same, more than you,’ said Tunwell, scanning his 
hand as if it was the real thing. 


2 5 8 


TAKING CHANCES. 


“ Burbridge raised him another $10,000 and flicked a 
bit of ashes off his collar. Now Tunwell felt that his 
man was bluffing. 

“ ‘ I call you,’ said he. 

“ ‘ Ace high/ said Burbridge. 

“ * Ace high here/ said Tunwell. 

“ 4 Queen next/ 

“ ‘ Queen next here/ 

“ ‘ Nine next/ 

“ ‘ Nine next here/ 

“ ‘ Six next/ 

“ Tunwell tossed his four that was next on to the table 
face upward without the movement of an eyebrow. 

“ ‘ Six wins the $60,000/ said he, and the contractor 
strolled back from the window. 

“ ‘ Better luck next time, Tunwell/ said he, smiling, 
while Burbridge drank a glass of water. 

“ * There isn’t going to be any next time, my boy/ re- 
turned Tunwell. ‘I’m no hog/ ” 


TAKING CHANCES. 


259 


THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE. 

And How a Whirl at It Came Near Decimating the 
Population of a Section of the Indian Territory. 

“ I don't just recall the name of the cheerful worker 
who invented that wise phrase, ‘ There’s a sucker born 
every minute, and they never die/ but whoever he was he 
had something inside his head besides mayonnaise dress- 
ing,” said a giant from the Indian Territory, when the 
talk among a party of Westerners at a road-house the 
other night switched around to sure-thing games and 
cinch propositions. “ I don’t suppose there ever was yet a 
sure-thing game rigged up that didn’t get its quota of 
nibblers, and even its occasional easy marks, who’d go up 
against it with their whole rolls. I’m not speaking so 
much now of brace games as I am of layouts that might 
just as well have the words, ‘You lose/ painted all over 
’em, they’re such obvious air-tights for the dealers. I 
suppose we’ve all been up against brace faro. That’s 
something that a man can’t heel himself against; the most 
he can do when he gets next to it that two of ’em are 
slipping out of the box at one and the same time is to 
‘ stick up ’ the dealer at the business end of a .45 — if he’s 
quick enough — accumulate all the money in sight, and 
back toward the door. 

“ But a man who’ll lay up alongside of a brace faro 
layout or a brace wheel need not necessarily be sucker 
enough to hand his dust over to a smooth duck who’s 
dealing a game that has all the scars, moles, tattoo marks 
and other perfectly visible Bertillons of a dead open and 


c6o 


TAKING CHANCES. 


shut sure-thing layout. Yet I’ve seen men who were wise 
in their own business — horse-rustling, for instance — go 
broke against games that you’d think a ten-year-old would 
size up correctly without the assistance of an X-ray appa- 
ratus. 

“ I’m thinking of the time that Jink McAtee, after- 
ward one of the foxiest horse-thieves who ever used an 
upside-down brand in the Southwest, got interested in 
squeeze-spindle in Guthrie. It was in Guthrie, in May, 
1899, just after Oklahoma had been opened up, that the 
two Reeves brothers, Bill and Al, and Arthur Pendleton 
started an all-round layout in what was the first two- 
story shack that had been thrown up in the town. The 
two Reeves boys are still running the biggest layout 
in Guthrie, but Pendleton is dead. The Reeves-Pendle- 
ton brand of faro, as well as their keno, wheel, stud, 
and other legitimate games, was perfectly on the level, 
but in addition they had a few games in operation that 
was plain cases to most of the patrons of the layout of 
the sure-thing. The Reeves and Pendleton people didn’t 
club anybody into stacking up against their sure-thing 
games. They just started ’em going, hired a man named 
Gately to run ’em, and struck the attitude that if among 
the sooners and boomers of Guthrie there was people 
imbecile enough to want to hit up these sure-thing games, 
it wasn’t their funeral. 

“ The most alluring among these sure-thing games was 
the outfit called the squeeze-spindle. You used to run 
across a squeeze-spindle quite often down in the South- 
west, but so many of the dealers of that game got shot 
up and slithered that it has sort o' passed out. It’s a 
lottery game ostensibly, where the player makes what the 
dealer calls ‘ conditional ’ winnings, and the dealer has to 
have the assistance of ‘ boosters ’ to throw confidence into 


taking chances. 


261 


the suckers. It took a good con man to run a squeeze- 
spindle game. The sucker would put up a hundred to 
win five hundred ; he’d cop the coin ‘ conditionally ’ — 
that is to say, the arrow that flew around in the middle 
of the box had to point to another number of the sucker’s 
selection before the money would be his to walk away 
with, and in the event of the arrow pointing to the right 
number the player would get twice the sum. 

“ Of course the arrow never went the sucker’s way 
twice hand-running, and equally, of course, it was a 
game where the dealer got all of the money. The rea- 
son it was called a squeeze-spindle was because the dealer 
had only to squeeze a button beneath the table to stop 
the arrow at any old point in its flight around the num- 
bers that he wanted to. When a sucker was up against 
the game, a ‘ booster ’ would prance in with a big roll of 
the house’s money, treble it on a couple of straight turns 
of the spindle, squeezed just his way by the dealer, and 
then the sucker would conclude that it was only his lack 
of capital that caused him to lose — just as the pin-head 
who doubles on favorites at the races tries to convince 
himself when’s he’s broke and smoking a punk pipe that 
he’d have been able to put all the bookmakers out of busi- 
ness if he’d just had the capital to keep on with his sys>- 
tem. Once in a great while a squeeze-spindle dealer 
would let one of his good things get away with a bunch 
of money, if he felt reasonably sure that the sucker would 
come back at it with the coin later on ; and thus the 
ingenuous little fiction ’ud go around that So-and-So 
had pasted a squeeze-spindle dealer for his whole roll, and 
this would make business. 

“ Now, here was a game that you wouldn’t think a 
man with the sense he was born with would bet twenty 
cents worth of zinc money on. But this man Gately, who 


262 


TAKING CHANCES 


ran the squeeze-spindle for the Reeves-Pendleton layout 
on a salary and commission basis, was a pretty smooth 
gazzabo in his generation, and he landed the good things 
with his layout right along, and often for sizeable money. 
He was a quiet, red bearded chap, with a mighty con- 
vincing, persuasive way about him, and a man who’d 
put up a fight, too, in a corner. He had free rein in the 
running of the squeeze-spindle and two or three other 
sure-thing devices that formed a sort of side-show to 
the main Reeves-Pendleton layout, and the proprietors 
pretended that his outfit was really independent of their 
plant — that Gately was simply renting space from them 
and going it alone. But all Guthrie knew differently. , 

“ Well, up against this squeeze-spindle plant goes this 
here Jink McAtee that I started to tell you about. Jink 
wasn’t then known as a horse-thief. He had been a 
sooner — he got in long before the trumpet call on a thor- 
oughbred Kentucky horse that he was afterward found 
to have pinched out of a barn — and he had made a pretty 
good thing out of the Guthrie corner lot that he had staked 
off. He sold it three days after the dash for $6000, and 
then he laid back on his liquor with a whole lot of content. 
He was a low forehead in looks and manners. He was 
the veriest duffer in his attempts to make the Reeves- 
Pendleton combination put up their shutters by attacking 
their square games, and he lost over $3000 of his corner- 
lot money at their faro tables. He blew in another 
couple of thousand of the bunch at the honkatonks 
around town before his little beady eyes fell on Gately’s 
squeeze-spindle, and he perceived a chance to get all of 
his money back in jig-time. Gately pointed it out to 
him just how easy it was. 

“ Before McAtee put a dollar down on the spindle 
Gately got Jink’s eyes to popping by roping in a booster 


TAKING CHANCES. 


263 


who pulled $3200 out of the squeeze-spindle in quicker 
time than a cayuse could make two jumps, and when 
Gately looked chagrined and sorrowful McAtee bit. 
Gately knew his man pretty well, and he permitted Jink 
to not only win $1600 ‘ conditionally/ right off the reel, 
but he actually passed $400 of Jink’s winnings over to 
him. Then he proceeded to wipe Jink out. When 
McAtee was all trimmed up, Gately looked sad. 

You didn’t have quite enough along with you, Mc- 
Atee,’ he said, shaking his head real mournfully. ‘ If 
you’d had another $200 to cover that $1600 that you’d 
won and left in the hole, why, you’d had me heading 
for the Canadian River by this time.’ 

“ McAtee ate this spiel of Gately’s up as if it was so 
much lunch on a counter, and went away filled with the 
idea that there was riches in the squeeze-spindle if it was 
hit right, and with enough money to back up the plays. 
So he went to just eleven of his sooner friends and talked 
squeeze-spindle to ’em. He put it to them just what a 
good thing the squeeze-spindle was rightly hammered. 
He told ’em how near he’d been to pulling out his losings, 
and more besides, through the medium of Gately’s 
squeeze-spindle at the Reeves-Pendleton layout. They 
took Jink’s word for it, and they all joined the pool that 
McAtee organized to smash that spindle. They got to- 
gether $2600, and on the afternoon following Jink’s play 
they walked down to the Reeves-Pendleton plant in a 
body. Each man had a rifle along with him. There 
wasn’t anything remarkable about that. During the first 
year of Guthrie’s existence every man carried a long-iron 
over his arm. If twelve men, all with rifles, were to 
line up in front of the Reeves-Pendleton layout in Guthrie 
to-day there’d be good reason for the people inside to 
suppose that they were going to be ‘ stuck up,’ but there 


264 


TAKING CHANCES. 


was no reason to suppose anything of the kind when Jack 
McAtee brought along his eleven subscribers to his 
squeeze-spindle-smashing pool that afternoon. Gately 
wasn’t worried a little bit. 

“ ‘ My friends is all got a interest in this, podner,’ ex- 
plained Jink to Gately, ‘ and they come along jest t’ see 
th’ play.’ 

“ ‘ Certainly,’ said Gately, and then Jink and his bunch 
began to get action on the spindle. It all went their 
way at first. Gately didn’t actually hand them any 
money out, but he let ’em make ‘ conditional ’ wins until 
they had their whole $2600 on the layout. Another cor- 
rect twist of the arrow would enable Jink to double the 
money; on the other hand, if the arrow didn’t hit the 
right number, Jink and his bunch only stood to lose, as 
Gately explained, $600 of their ‘ conditional ’ winnings. 

“ Now, the situation was one calculated to rattle almost 
any man. Gately didn’t intend that Jink or his twelve 
stalkers with the long-irons should get away with any of 
that money, and it shows that he was a man of nerve 
in making up his mind to that idea. He intended to 
get the $2600 after a long series of plays, and then take 
a chance on the Jink McAtee gang roaring and opening 
up on him. That’s what he intended to do. But he was 
a bit rattled and stampeded over the intense way the 
gang had of looking upon the plays, and that’s how he 
happened to make a mistake. He gave his button too 
short a squeeze, and blamed if the arrow didn’t stop at 
precisely the number that stood to win Jink and his gang 
$2600 of the house’s money, in addition to pulling down 
the $2600 they had in ! 

“ Gately saw his mistake almost as soon as he had 
made it, but a booster named Gilpin, who was watching 
the play, was the quicker thinker of the two. He jumped 


TAKING CHANCES. 26 5 

off a stool upon which he had been standing looking 
over the heads of Jink’s crowd, and yelled out : 

“ 4 Stand clear, there ! Don’t shoot ! ’ 

“ It was a ruse. Nobody had any idea of shooting. 
Jink and his gang were simply flooded with joy over their 
winning. But when they heard Gilpin’s warning, they 
all jumped back, and that was Gately’s chance to redeem 
his bad break. He snatched up the $5200 — the rule of 
the spindle game is that the dealer must show the same 
amount of money the sucker has got in play, and Gately 
had $2600 of the house’s money spread out — and back he 
jumped through the door, which led out into an alley. 
Jink and his crowd were stupefied. They stood stock still. 
Gately had gone with their money and the house’s money, 
and they didn’t think of taking after him. They figured 
it that the house would make good, perhaps. Anyhow, 
by the time they came to, Gately had mazed it through 
the wilderness of shacks of which Guthrie was already 
composed, and Bill Reeves had appeared on the scene. 

“ I had been with Bill in the main layout in the next 
room, and we heard the shout of Gilpin. That’s what 
took us in there. Jink made his talk, which was a pretty 
hot and threatening one, and he was backed up in it pretty 
forcibly by all the rest of his gang. 

“ Well, Gately jumped, that’s all,’ said Reeves. ‘ What 
am I going to do about it? ’ 

“ ‘ Hand over $5200 quick,’ said McAtee and some 
others of his bunch. 

“ ‘ I haven’t got anything like that much money in the 
place,’ said Reeves. ‘ But I’ll give you a check for it on 
the bank down the way.’ 

“ They demurred over the check proposition for awhile, 
but they finally took Bill Reeves’s check for $5200. 
While they were demurring, Bill Reeves had a chance to 


266 


TAKING CHANCES. 


scribble a note to the cashier of the bank, telling him not 
to cash the check when it would be presented — to make 
some excuse about not having just that amount of money 
on hand, or something of that sort. Now, I didn’t want 
to be in that place at all just then, but there was no way 
of my getting out. I had come into the room with Bill 
Reeves, and I knew that if I tried to mosey away I’d 
be called back ; that they figured me to have some sort of 
connection with the layout, which I didn’t. 

“ Jink took the check and went over to the bank to 
get the money. The cashier turned the check down on 
the ground that he had just shipped most of the bank’s 
money to St. Louis. We knew that there was going to be 
trouble and a whole lot of it when Jink got back from the 
bank with that word, and I don’t think any of us ex- 
pected to last much longer. Jink came a-loping back 
from the bank, and when he came into the room and tore 
up the check with appropriate remarks his gang all lined 
up together, and we figured it that the shooting was going 
to begin right then. When the whole situation looked 
so squally that I had my eye on the nearest window to 
drop out of, Arthur Pendleton popped into the room. 

“‘What’s all this?’ he yelled, for there was a lot of 
clicking going on in the room. Jink and his gang thought 
they saw a final chance of getting their money. So, 
smoldering, they told the story to Pendleton. Pendle- 
ton was a shrewd man, a forceful talker, and a diplomat 
from away back. 

“ ‘ All the money I’ve got, or that there is in the roll 
just now,’ he said, ‘ is $600,’ pulling the roll out of his 
pocket. ‘ You are perfectly welcome to that. When 
Gately comes back, or when you get him, as I wish you 
would, you can have the rest that’s coming to you out of 
the roll he pinched.’ 


TAKING CHANCES. 


2 67 


Well, the $600 looked like better than no bread to 
Jink and his bunch, and they took it and went out after 
Gately. It was getting along toward twilight. Reeves 
and Pendleton figured it that Gately, in pulling down the 
roll, had been acting in the interest of the house. They 
hadn’t the slightest notion that Gately had eloped with the 
$5200. They thought he’d plant the money, keep out of 
sight for a few days until the Jink McAtee push could 
be compromised with, and then come back. 

“ McAtee’s gang beat up every shack in town thor- 
oughly, but there was no Gately. They whipped the 
prairie for miles around, but they didn’t spring Gately. 
Gately had gone. The gang came back to the Reeves- 
Pendleton layout, all of ’em pretty ugly. Pendleton got 
them bunched, made a speech to them to the effect that if 
Gately wasn’t corralled within a week he’d make good the 
whole amount coming to them out of his own pocket, 
and soft-soaped them into accepting those terms. They 
dispersed. 

“ When Gately didn’t come back the next day, or give 
any indication to his employers where he was, they got 
worried. 

“ ‘ I think Gately has drilled/ Pendleton said to me 
that day. 4 He’s an Iowan, and there’s going to be a big 
conclave and tournament of firemen in Council Bluffs 
next week. I’ll bet Gately has made for Council Bluffs. 
I’m going after him. Come along with me.’ 

“ I told Pendleton that I hadn’t anything to do with 
the game, but I wasn’t overlooking business propositions, 
and when he offered me 50 per cent, of all the money 
we might reclaim from Gately, I went with him. We 
got onto Gately’s trail in Council Bluffs, as Pendleton 
had shrewdly guessed we might, but he had been tipped 
off that we were after him, and he chased over to Omaha. 


268 


TAKING CHANCES. 


We were right after him, and he jumped for a town in 
Southwestern Iowa called Red Oak. We were hot on 
his trail, and we met up with him squarely next day in 
Red Oak. 

“ ‘ Let’s have the money, Gately,’ said Pendleton. 

“ ‘ I’ll pass you back the house bunch, $2600,’ said 
Gately, ‘ but the rest of it I keep,’ and he looked as if he 
meant it, good and hard, at that. 

“ ‘ How do you make that out a square deal ? ’ asked 
Pendleton. 

“ ‘ Because,’ replied Gately, pretty convincingly, ‘ it was 
me that took the chance. I made a mistake, and stood 
to lose the house’s $2600. If I hadn’t taken a chance, 
they’d have got the coin. If I’d have won their $2600, 
your shack would have been shot into a sieve, and me into 
the bargain. It was a case of run. I had to do the run- 
ning. I earned the $2600, and I hang on to it.’ 

“ It struck me that this was pretty square talk, and I 
told Pendleton so, and advised him to cut out any idea 
of getting all the money back from Gately through the 
medium of a gun-play. Gately handed out $2600, and then 
he told us how he had got away. He had struck across the 
prairie for Mulhall, and some of the McAtee gang, in 
scouring the country a-horseback, had not only been right 
behind him, but they had passed him. He heard them 
coming from behind, and he thought they had recognized 
him in the twilight. He didn’t dare to look back, but he 
stooped down as if to tie his shoe, and looked at them 
under his arm while in that stooping posture. They didn’t 
figure that the man they were after would be taking things 
so leisurely as all that, and so they passed right by him 
in the gathering gloom, a-hunting Gately. Gately got 
to Mulhall, and took the first train up for Omaha. 

“ Before we got back to Guthrie, Jink McAtee and 


TAKING CHANCES. 


269 


several of his pals in the pool to smash the Gately squeeze- 
spindle had been given the sudden chase by the United 
States Deputy Marshals for some horse-rustling opera- 
tion of theirs that had just come to light, and when Jink 
McAtee got shot full of slugs by a posse down in the 
Brazos bottoms, three years later, the Reeves-Pendleton 
layout still stood indebted to him in the sum of $4600, 
with accrued interest, the balance that Jink and his push 
did not pull down in their attempt to stampede a squeeze- 
spindle layout/’ 


G. W. DILLINGHAM CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 


3 


Augusta J. Evans' Novels. 

“Who has not read with rare delight the novels of August* Evans? Her strange, 
wonderful, and fascinating style ; the profound depths to which she sinks the probe into 
human nature, touching its most sacred chords and springs ; the intense interest thrown 
around her characters, and the very marked peculiarities of her principal figures, conspire 
to give an unusual interest to the works of this eminent Southern authoress.** 


Beulah $i 75 St. Elmo . $200 

Macaria i 75 Vashti 200 

Inez 175 Infelice 200 

At the Mercy of Tiberius. . . 200 

ST. ELMO, Magnolia Edition , 2 vols. Svo., Magnificently Illustrated 
•with 30 Photogravure and Half-tone Engravings. Per set, $6.00. 


Julie P. Smith’s Novels. 

“ The novels by this author are of unusual merit, uncommonly well written, clever, 
and characterized by great wit and vivacity. They are growing popular and more popular 
every day.” 


Widow Goldsmith’s Daugh- 


ter $1 50 

Chris and Otho 1 50 

Ten Old Maids 1 50 

Lucy 1 50 

His Young Wife 1 50 


The Widower $1 50 

The Married Belle 1 50 

Courting and Farming 1 50 

Kiss and Be Friends 1 50 

Blossom Bud 1 50 


Marion Harland’s Novels. 


“The Novels of Marion Harland are of surpassing excellence. By intrinsic power 
of character-drawing and descriptive facility, they hold the reader’s attention with the 
most intense interest and fascination. 


Alone $1 50 

Hidden Path 1 50 

Moss Side 1 50 

Nemesis 1 50 

Miriam 1 50 

Sunny Bank 150 

Ruby’s Husband 1 50 

At Last 1 50 


My Ltttle Love $1 50 

Phemie’s Temptation 150 

The Empty Heart 1 50 

From My Youth Up 1 50 

Helen Gardner 1 50 

Husbands and Homes. 1 50 

Jessamine 1 50 

True as Steel 1 50 


4'I 


G. TV. DILLINGHAM CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 




Albert Ross’ Novels. 

New Cloth Bound Editions . 


•'Hiere is a great difference between the productions of Albert R**s and those of 
Some of the sensational wrMers of recent date. When he depicts vice he does it with an 
artistic touch, but he nevef makes it attractive. Mr. Ross’ dramatic instincts are strong 
His characters become in his hands living, moving creatures-** 


Thou Shalt Not 

His Private Character. . , 

Speaking of Ellen 

Her Husband’s Friend. , 
The Garston Bigamy. . . , 
Thy Neighbor’s Wife. . . . 

Young Miss Giddy 

Out of Wedlock 

Young Fawcett’s Mabel. 

His Foster Sister 

The Naked Truth .„..w 


$i oo 
i oo 
, i oo 
I oo 
I oo 
i oo 
I oo 
I oo 
I oo 
I oo 
I oo 


In Stella’s Shadow $i oo 

Moulding a Maiden. I oo 

Why I’m Single I oo 

An Original Sinner. ....... I oo 

Love at Seventy. i oo 

A Black Adonis I oo 

Love Gone Astray i oo 

Their Marriage Bond i on 

A New Sensation i oo 

That Gay Deceiver ! .^ • . . . . i oo 


Stranger Than Fiction {New) i <x. 


John Esten Cooke’s Works. 


u The thrilling historic stories of John Esten Cooke must be classed among the best 
and most popular of all American writers. The great contest between the States was the 
theme he chose for his Historic Romances. Following until the close of the war the for- 
tunes of Stuart, Ashby, Jackson and Lee, he returned to ‘ Eagle’s Nest,* his old home, 
where, in the quiet of peace, he wrote volume after volume, intense in dramatic interest,” 


Surry of Eagle’s Nest $1 50 

Fairfax I 50 

Hammer and Rapier $1 50 

Mohun 1 50 

Hilt to Hilt 150 

Beatrice Hallam.,,. .. -. . . . 1 50 
Leather and Silk . . ■ • • . ..... 1 Co 

Captain Ralph 1 50 

Col. Ross of Piedmont... .. 1 50 
Robert E. Lee T 5 ° 

Miss Bonnybel. 1 50 

Out of the Foam 150 

Stonewall Jackson 150 

Her Majesty the Queen .... 1 50 


A. S. Roe’s Novels. 


" There is no writer of the present day who excels A. S. Roe, in his particular line of 
fiction. He is distinguished by his fidelity to nature, his freedom from affectation, his 
sympathy with the interests of everyday existence and his depth and sincerity of feeling 
His stories appeal to the heart, and strengthen and refresh it.” 


True to the Last $i 50 

A Long Look Ahead 1 50 

The Star and the Cloud .... 1 50 

I've Been Thinking 1 50 

How Could He Help It 1 50 


Like and Unlike • • « f I 50 


To Love and To Be Loved.. $1 50 

Time and Tide.. .. .. 1 50 

Woman Our Angel. . ... 1 50 
Looking Around.... .. ..... 1 50 

The Cloud on the Heart. ... 1 50 

Resolution . I CO 


G. IV. DILLINGHAM CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 


Arthur Henry Veysey. 

“Mi. Veysey’s mode of expression shows the spirit snd faculty of an artist. His 
manner of developing an idea and leading up to a situation is boldly dramatic and of fasci- 
nating originality.” 

Cheque for Three Thousand. $i oo|A Pedigree in Pawn $i 25 

The Two White Elephants. . 1 25lHats Off {New,') 1 25 

Wm, Le Queux. 

“ Since the day of Wilkie Co.lins there has not been a writer able to keep up a mys- 
tery as cleverly as Mr. William Le Queux. He possesses the art of weaving romances that 
enthral the reader to the last page* 

If Sinners Entice Thee $1 5o|The Day of Temptation . . .$1 50 

The Bond of Black. 1 50I 

Josh Billings. 

His Complete Writings, Biography and 100 Illustrations 2 00 

Artemus Ward. 

Complete Comic Writings — Revised Edition, with 28 full page 

Illustrations and Photogravure Frontispiece 2 00 

Celia E. Gardner’s Novels. 

“ Miss Gardner’s works are becoming more and more popular every year, and they 
will continue to be popular long after many of our present favorite writers are forgotten/* 


Stolen Waters (In 

verse) . . . 

.$1 50 

Rich Medway 

.$1 50 

Broken Dreams 

do . . . 

. 1 50 

A Woman’s Wiles 

. 1 50 

Compensation 

do 

. 1 50 

Terrace Roses 

. 1 50 

A Twisted Skein 

do . . . 

. 1 50 

Seraph — or Mortal 

. 1 50 

Tested 


. 1 50 

Won Under Protest {New) 

. 1 50 


Captain Mayne Reid’s Works. 

“ Captain Mayne Reid’s works are of an intensely interesting and fascinating character. 
Nearly all of them being founded upon some historical event, they possess a permanent 
value while presenting a thrilling, earnest, dashing fiction surpassed by no novel of the 
day.” 


The Scalp Hunters , . 


5 o 

The White Chief 


The Rifle Rangers 


5 o 

The Tiger Hunter 

. . . 1 50 

The War Trail 


5 o 

The Hunter’s Feast 

. . . 1 50 

The Wood Rangers 


5 o 

Wild Life 

. . . 1 50 

The Wild Huntress 


5 o 

Osceola, the Seminole.. . 

... 150 

The Maroon 


5 o 

The Quadroon 


The Headless Horseman. 

. 1 

5 o 

The White Gauntlet .... 

... 1 50 

The Rangers and Regulators 1 

50 

Lost Lenore. 

.. 1 50 






MRS. MARY J. HOLMES’ NOVELS. 

Over THREE MILLION Sold. 

in. Holmes’ stories are universally read. Her admirers are numberless. She is 
• respects without a rival in the world of fiction. Her characters are always life 
1 she makes them talk and act like human beings, subject to the same emotions, 
by the same passions, and actuated by the same motives which are common among; 
1 women of everyday existence.” 


st and Sunshine, 
h Orphans. 

;stead qn the Hillside, 
ow Brook, 
tmas Stories. 

„ron Pride, 
mess and Daylight, 
h Worthington, 
est House. 

, Hathern’s Daughters, 
le Tracy Diamonds (New), 


Chateau D’Or. 

Queenie Hetherton. 
Bessie’s Fortune. 

'Lena Rivers. 

Rose Mather. 

Cousin Maude. 

Marian Grey. 

Ethelyn's Mistake. 
Madeline. 

Mrs. Hallam’s Companion. 
Price $x.oo per Vol. 


Millbank. 

Edna Browning. 
West Lawn. 

Dora Deane. 
Edith Lyle. 
Gretchen. 

Daisy Thornton. 

Mildred. 

Marguerite. 

Paul Ralston 


AUGUSTA J. EVANS’ 

MAGNIFICENT NOVELS. 

“Who has not read with rare delight the novels of Augusta Evans? Her strange, 
vonderful, and fascinating style; the profound depths to which she sinks the probe into 
human nature, touching its most sacred chords and springs; the intense interest thrown 
iround her characters, and the very marked peculiarities of her principal figures, conspire 
to give an unusual interest to the works of this eminent Southern authoress.” 

Macaria, $1.75 Beulah, $175 St. Elmo, $2.00 Vashti, $2.00 

Inea, $1.75 Infelice, $2.00 At the Mercy of Tiberius, $2.00 (New). 

MARION HARLAND’S 

SPLENDID NOVELS. 

“ Marion Harland understands the art of constructing a plot which will gain the at*e» 
tion of the reader at the beginning, and keep up the interest to the last page.” 


Alone, 

Hidden Path. 
Moss Side. 
Nemesis. 


Miriam. 

Sunny Bank. 
Ruby's Husband. 
At Last. 


Phemie’s Temptation. 
My Little Love. 

The Empty Heart. 
From My Youth Up. 
Price $1.00 per Vol. 


Helen Gardner. 
Husbands and Homes. 
Jessamine. 

True as SteeL 


MAY AGNES FLEMING’S 

POPULAR NOVELS. 

“Mrs. Fleming’s stories are growing more and more popular every day. Their life 
like conversations, flashes of wit, constantly varying scenes, and deeply interesting plots 
combine to place their author in the very first rank of Modern Novelists, 


A Wonderful Woman. 
One Night’s Mystery. 
Guy Earlscourt’s Wife. 
The Actress’ Daughter. 
The Queen of the Isle. 
Edith Percival, 


A Changed Heart. 
Silent and True. 
Sharing Her Crime. 
Maude Percy’s Secret. 
The Midnight Queen. 
Wedded for Pique. 


Kate Danton. 

A Terrible Secret. 
Carried by Storm. 
Heir of Charlton. 
A Mad Marriage. 


A Fateful Abduction (New). 


Pride and Passion 
A Wronged Wife. 
A Wife’s Tragedy, 
Lost for a Woman. 
Norine's Revenge, 


Price $1.00 per Vol. 


Ail the books on this list are handsomely printed and bound in cloth, sold 
everywhere, and by mail, postage free, on receipt of price by 

?Jjb> G ’ w * Di li'ngham Co, Publishers, 

II 9 A 121 West 23d Street, New York. 


JULIE P. SMITH’S NOVELS. 


*The novels by this author are of unusual merit, uncommonly well written, clever, 
end characterized by great wit and vivacity. They are growing popular and more popular 
every day.’* 

Widow Goldsmith's Daughter. Chris and Otho. Ten Old Maids. The Widower. 

Courting and Farming. The Married Belle. Blossom Bud. Lucy. 

Kiss and be Friends. His Young Wife. 

Price $t.oo per Vol, 

ALBERT ROSS’ NOVELS. 

New Cloth. Bound Editions. 


“ There is a great difference between the productions of Albert Ross and those of 
some of the sensational writers of recent date. When he depicts vice he does it with an 
artistic touch, but he never makes it attractive. Mr. Ross’ dramatic instincts are strong. 
His characters become in his hands living, moving creatures.” 


Thy Neighbor’s Wife. 
Her Husband’s Friend. 
The Garston Bigamy. 
His Private Character. 
Young Fawcett’s Mabel, 
That Gay Deceiver ! 


Young Miss Giddy. Why I’m Single. 

Speaking of Ellen. Love at Seventy. 
Moulding a Maiden. Thou Shalt Not. 

In Stella’s Shadow. A Black Adonis. 

Their Marriage Bond. The Naked T ruth, 
Stranger Than Fiction. A Sugar Princess, 

Price $r.oo per Vol. 


An Original Sinner, 
Out of Wedlock. 
Love Gone Astray. 
His Foster Sister. 

A New Sensation, 
(New), 


JOHN ESTEN COOKE’S WORKS. 

“ The thrilling historic stories of John Esten Cooke must be classed among the best 
and most popular of all American writers. The great contest between the States was the 
theme he chose for his Historic Romances. Following until the close of the war the for- 
tunes of Stuart, Ashby, Jackson, and Lee, he returned to “ Eagle’s Nest,” his old home, 
where, in the quiet of peace, he wrote volume after volume, intense in dramatic interest.” 

Surry of Eagle’s Nest. Fairfax. Hilt to Hilt. Beatrice Hallam. 

Leather and Silk. Miss Bonnybel. Out of the Foam. Mohun. 

Hammer and Rapier. Captain Ralph. Stonewell Jackson. Robert E. Lee. 

Col. Ross of Piedmont. Her Majesty the Queen, 

Price $1.50 per Vol. 


CELIA E. GARDNER’S NOVELS. 

** Miss Gardner’s works are becoming more and more popular every year, and they 
will continue to be popular long after many of our present favorite writers are forgotten.” 


Stolen Waters. (In verse). 
Broken Dreams. Do. 

Compensation. Do. 

A Twisted Skein. Do. 
Tested. 


Rich Medway. 

A Woman’s Wiles. 

Terrace Roses. 

Seraph — or Mortal ? 

Won Under Protest. (New). 

Price $1.50 per Vol. 


CAPTAIN MAYNE REID’S WORKS. 


“ Captain Mayne Reid's works are of an intensely interesting and fascinating character. 
Nearly all of them being founded upon some historical event, they possess a permanent 
value while presenting a thrilling, earnest, dashing fiction surpassed by no novel of the day.” 


The Scalp Hunters. 
The War Trail. 

The Maroon. 

The Tiger Hunter. 
Osceola, the Seminole. 
Lost Lenore. 


The Rifle Rangers. 

The Wood Rangers. 

The Rangers and Regulators. 
The Hunter’s Feast. 

The Quadroon. 


The Headless Horseman. 
The Wild Huntress. 

The Whi* Chief. 

Wild Lif /. 

The White Gauntlet. 


Price $1.00 per Vol. 


A!! the books on this list are handsomely printed and bound in cloth, sold 
everywhere, and by mail, postage free, on receipt of price by 



G- W. Dillingham Co., Publishers, 

I 19 A 121 West 23d Street, New York. 


AUGUSTA J. EVANS' J 

MAGNIFICENT NOVELS. | 

$ 1.75 
. 1.75 

1.75 
2.00 
. 2.00 
2.00 
. 2.00 

ST. ELMO, Magnolia Edition, 2 vols. Zvo., Magnificently ; 
Illustrated with 30 Photogravure and Half-tone Engravings . 
Per set t . $6.00 


A Prominent Critic says of these Novels. 

“ The author's style is beautiful, chaste, and elegant. 
Her ideals are clothed in the most fascinating imagery, and j 
her power of delineating character is truly remarkable. One 
of the marked and striking characteristics of each and all 
her works is the purity of sentiment which 
line, every page, and every chapter.*’ 


All handsomely printed and bound in clothe sold everywhere , 
and sent by mail , postage free . on receipt of price , by : 

. \ 

igw G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers, j 

vK H 9 & 121 West 23d Street, New York. \ 



INEZ, . 

MACARIA, .... 
BEULAH, . ... 

VASHTI, . . 

INFELICE, . . . 

AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS, 
ST. ELMO, .... 





























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